I took Johnny and his cousins to Caerphilly Castle along with my brother and sister on Sunday 19th January, and while the boys played I did some surreptitious bryology. The castle held 31 relatively mundane bryophyte species, with Tortella nitida, Pseudocrossidium revolutum and Gyroweisia tenuis perhaps the most interesting. However, the park to the south held several extremely mossy trees and added more than 20 species to the tally. Pylaisia polyantha was fruiting on the north side of one of the first Maples I checked, and when I checked the south side of the tree I noticed several shoots of immediately recognisable Habrodon perpusillus. Young Cryphaea heteromalla often makes me ponder Habrodon, but there's something distinctive about the yellow-green colour of Habrodon and the way its extremely narrow shoots curve out away from the trunk. Microscope checking revealed no costa, the filiform apex, and the correct lamina and marginal cell shapes. Zygodon viridissimus was fruiting abundantly on a nearby Sycamore, and other species noted included Orthotrichum tenellum, O. striatum and Cololejeunea minutissima.
There are 6 other known Welsh sites for the GB Red Listed, Environment Wales Act Section 7 moss Habrodon, 4 of which are in Glamorgan:
VC41 Candleston Castle, Merthyr Mawr NNR (still present on Sycamores, thanks to management by the NNR warden to reduce shading)
VC41 Ogmore river (Chris Forster Brown record that I failed to relocate)
VC41 Fonmon Castle (Chris Forster Brown record that I haven't searched for, not on NBN)
VC41 Vaynor (Roy Perry's pub carpark colony has now gone but the species survives on nearby hedgerow Ash)
VC44 Sir John's Hill, Laugharne (a good-sized population on several trees)
VC47 Penant Melangell (found on a fallen tree by Mark Hill in the 1970s and never seen since in Powys)
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| Pylaisia polyantha with abundant sporophytes |
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| Habrodon perpusillus growing with Zygodon conoideus |
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| Sporophytes on Zygodon viridissimus |
Wow! - Habrodon in Caerphilly - as impressive as the castle (and that's mighty impressive). By the way, did I mention that in spring 2018 I followed Dylan's 'Birthday Walk' at Laugharne - once on the south side of the hill I noticed that the bark on a lot of the path-side trees had been badly damaged by horses - hopefully not the Habrodon ones? Some of the pathside outcrops were looking a bit messed up too - but did managed to spot one small patch of Targionia.
ReplyDeleteThat really is a top find!
ReplyDeleteI did some recording within the castle walls back in 2014 and recorded 22 species including T. nitida. Should've looked at the trees!
There is a cluster of records of the mainly coastal T. nitida in that area...I've added a map to your post.