Tywyn Point scraped slack

Following yesterday's meeting at the offices of RAF Pembrey Sands, we were taken out onto the range, though time was limited as a Tornado was scheduled to come in for bombing practice. Richard Pryce and myself managed to sneak off for 15 minutes to do some recording in the southern ⅓ of the rectangular scraped slack (clearly visible on the Google aerial at SN365048[corrected]). The scrape was still quite barren, particularly bryologically, but the southern margin was found to be a little richer and Amblyodon dealbatus was among the 12 species recorded, with occasional non-fruiting plants found growing all along the 30m southern edge of the scrape. The Carms flora shows the species is already known from the site and was last recorded there by Sam in 2004 (I'm not sure if there have been subsequent visits since publication). I've asked Richard to send me a couple of habitat pics for reference...[Richard's photos now added below, apologies for my mugshot being included, but it shows the scrape edge habitat where the Amblyodon was found perfectly]

Of less significance, but equally as interesting was a small population of Leptobryum pyriforme, this being the first time I have encountered the species in a dune slack. Plants were a little shorter than typical, but the tufted shoot tips, lack of an expanded leaf base and the presence of abundant rhizoidal gemmae (including some around the stem bases) seems to make identification safe in the absence of capsules, but happy to be corrected. The lower two images show the cell structure and the interesting surface sculpturing of the tubers - I can't find very good images of these on line to compare with, but they seem to match illustrations well.