Cefn Hirgoed

The last Glamorgan Botany Group trip of the season seems a distant memory now. It feels like it has rained almost non-stop since that sunny Saturday, the 21st September.

The outing to Cefn Hirgoed near Bridgend gave me chance to record a few bryophytes in SS98L, which helped push the list for that tetrad from 20 to 67 taxa. A few species were also added to the list for tetrad SS98K.

Nothing very remarkable was recorded in this area of acidic, often wet, grassy heath, but it was nice to see Bryum alpinum in Glamorgan for the first time in a while - a small patch growing by a small rock outcrop on damp flat ground. This record (circled red on the map below) is a little bit of an outlier, though Bridgend remains poorly recorded and there may well be other colonies waiting to be found.