With limited time for square bashing lately, I thought I'd start to target a few squares close to home which are lacking records of the 10 commonest species. So, today I walked Alfie on Fairwood Common in an effort to add
Ceratodon purpureus to SS59R and ended up spending 45 minutes splodging around the boggy area opposite the entrance to the university playing fields (SS576925). There were no major surprises, but it was nice to find
Cephalozia connivens and
a few patches of
Sphagnum compactum on a bog / wet-heath mosaic where there was a great abundance of
Hypericum elodes. A few calcicoles were found adjacent to the road, where I suspect buried Limestone chippings provide localised base enrichment in a square otherwise dominated by calcifuge species.
C.connivens growing in Trichophorum tussock, the main associates
being Hyp.jut., Cal.fis,, Cep.bic., Mni.hor. & Cam.pyr.
 |
| Sphagnum compactum |
 |
Straminergon stramineum growing
through mounds of Sphagnum subnitens |
I did eventually find some
Ceratodon...
Nice bit of habitat that - one of the best bits of the common for Marsh Frits, and close to where I found the Splachnum.
ReplyDeleteInteresting to see the Ceratodon map - looks like I need to do some more work on tarmac in Cardiff! It would be interesting to see a few other maps of common species at some stage...the Kindbergia map in my MapMate is starting to look pretty good.
Yes, that is a nice bit of habitat which also has Carex canescens and a nice population of Cranberry nearby. And that's a nice photo of C. connivens showing the longtitudinal leaf insertion.
ReplyDelete