A sweet surprise on the Sugar Loaf

St. Mary’s Vale on the southern flanks of the Sugar Loaf, just on the outskirts of Abergavenny, apparently supports a dry south-eastern example of a wet western oak woodland community, and a few areas do indeed have quite a western feel, with a bilberry ground layer and scattered hard-fern.  The ground layer doesn’t have the luxuriant moss layer seen in western versions of this woodland community, but if you search around you can find scattered patches of species like Rhytidiadelphus loreus, Dicranum majus, Pleurozium schreberi and Plagiothecium undulatum.    The locality also has a well-known population of Bazzania trilobata, which is confined to quite a small area on the north-east facing slope of the valley.    

During a visit to the site last week, I quickly paid my respects to the Bazzania and then wandered along the slope further up the valley, hoping to find that the Bazzania was more widespread than thought.   Eventually I came to a small area with a very steep bank above a hollow, which pleasingly had about 15 patches of Bazzania - a reasonable distance from the main population.   

     The shiny patches are Bazzania - flash reflecting off the broad round-backed stems.

In a nearby rocky area the ground was an almost continuous sheet of R. loreus and it was good to see that much of it was fruiting.

On a couple of rotting logs were a few patches of Nowellia curvifolia, which I don’t see a lot of in this part of Wales.  Every time I see this species I am reminded of the town of Todmorden, where I spent many teenage days fishing the canal and where one of my working class heroes, John Nowell, was born, after whom the liverwort genus Nowellia is named.  Nowell was an illegitimate and impoverished handloom weaver, who somehow in his few hours of free time became a skilled bryologist, regularly corresponding with giants of botany like William Hooker, Wilhelm Schimper and William Wilson.  If anyone is interested in finding out more about Nowell, Mark Lawley wrote a brief biography about him, which is available on the BBS web site https://rbg-web2.rbge.org.uk/bbs/activities/field%20bryology/FB108/BBS%20FB108%20Bygone%20Bryologist.pdf
, but a more detailed account was published in the BBS Bulletin some years earlier - Foster, W.D. (1980). Famous Bryologists. 1. John Nowell of Todmorden (1802–1867). Bulletin of the British Bryological Society 35, 13–20. 

On my way back to the car I walked past a couple of small stones poking out of the soil, which had patches of a tiny pale-looking liverwort, which I assumed was young Diplophyllum albicans, but then I noticed some red gemmae and thoughts turned to a Tritomaria; however, the lens revealed a tiny spiky Scapania, presumably umbrosa – a check of the gemmae under the microscope showed they were mostly twin-celled and thin-walled.   Sam tells me it is new to Monmouthshire.

I didn’t see much else of any great interest, apart from a patch of Cololejeunea minutissima on a riverside tree, which I don’t think I have seen in this valley before, and some gorgeous coral slime mould.