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Tuesday 13 September 2016

Back to the bash

Insects have started to leave a bit of space in my brain for bryophytes to fill. It must be September. Barry recently sent me an updated tetrad map which reminded me that I still had some unfinished business in north-east Cardiff before starting on the western Vale and southern RCT.

Last weekend I spent a little while square bashing in the Glamorgan part of ST28H, which had only 5 species recorded. As expected it wasn't very exciting bryologically - the eastern part of Coed Wern-ddu produced a predictable list of woodland species. As I got back to the car I noticed a maize field with a convenient public footpath running through it, and a few minutes here proved more interesting than the hour spent in the woodland. The maize field margins were thick with bryos including Riccia glauca, R. sorocarpa, Trichodon cylindricus and Bryum rubens.



This tetrad is now up to a reasonable species total but needs some further work along the lanes and beside the River Rhymney to pull it up to a good total.
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3 comments:

  1. Barry Stewart14 September 2016 at 07:23

    Some nice records there George. Our arable fields definitely deserve more attention, perhaps with more routine 'Fisking' to sample tuberous Bryum spp., although i suspect this is not the most exciting method for collecting data.

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  2. sambbryo14 September 2016 at 20:37

    That tetrad crosses into VC35, from where I've had 37 species. Clearly three will be some overlap, but your Riccia sorocarpa and Trichodon are new (I had R glauca).

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  3. GMT14 September 2016 at 21:35

    Thanks both. I wondered if you'd looked at the VC35 part of this tetrad Sam. I probably had 45 species so between us the tetrad total will be reasonable.

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