Garden Hornwort

There was a little family get-together at Sandra's Aunty Valmai and Uncle Alun's place in Cwmdulais this afternoon.  It seems an impossibility not to look at the ground and investigate anything that looks a little odd these days and the garden path, which was dressed with coal cinders from the Aga, proved too tempting not to get down on my knees, to much merriment from the relatives, especially when I told them they were walking over Hornwort! In the photo of the site, plants were scattered along the right-hand side of the garden path, this being shaded much of the day. I searched in vain for monoicious plants.

I think this is only the third site for Phaeoceros laevis in Glamorgan. I didn't have a note book at the time but the associates I can remember were Barbula convoluta var. sardoa, Brachythecium rivulare (the odd-looking pleurocarp in the image, checked under the microscope), Bryum dichotomum, Calliergonella cuspidata, Ceratodon purpureus, Cymbalaria muralis, Didymodon insulanus, Epilobium brunnescens, Funaria hygrometrica, Lophocolea bidentata, Lunularia cruciata, Marchantia polymorpha subsp. ruderalis, Pellia epiphylla, Pohlia wahlenbergii var. wahlenbergii and Pseudocrossidium hornschuchianum.