Trostre sidings

Snippets of interest from wet woodland near the railway sidings at Trostre included a little Ulota calvescens on the willows plus Calliergon cordifolium with capsules mounted upon impressively long setae, the latter a first for me of this normally barren species. However, at the same site, a crude estimate of 500+ emerging Twayblades in a 50m x 50m area stole the show.

Margam sidings

Also known as 'Kenfig marshalling yards', this area is now a stunning brown-field slack full of  goodies.

The 'railway fen' always seems to provide something new each time I visit and a small patch of Pseudocalliergon lycopodioides at SS7913483514 provided the highlight of yesterday's visit. Whilst Calliergonella cuspidata was largely dominant, there's also a lot of Drepanocladus polygamus and D. aduncus in the flooded areas along with a wide range of interesting vascular plants and charophytes; those noted yesterday included Chara virgata, Equisetum variegatum (a), Pyrola rotundifolia subsp. maritima (lf), Cladium mariscus (o-lf) Juncus acutus (lf), J. subnodulosus (la), and Scirpoides holoschoenus. Not too shabby for an area of abandoned industrial land!

L: P. lycopodioides, R: Location shown by plastic box

 L: Equisetum variegatum, R: Scirpoides holoschoenus

L: Chara virgata, R: Cladium mariscus

Leaves of P. lycopodioides, D. aduncus & D polygamus

The drier gravelly sidings also provided a little interest with some nice carpets of Amblystegium serpens var. salinum growing alongside species such as Rhynchostegium megapolitanum, Bryoerythrophyllum recurvirostrum and rather oddly Neckera complanata on open flat ground. A 'golden road' of Schistidium crasspilum was a fine spectacle as the sun started to break through.

 L: Neckera complanata, R: Location shown by knife

 L: Schistidium crassipilum, R: Amblystegium serpens var. salinum

My route

Lanlay Meadows

My first square bash of 2017, yesterday afternoon, took me to National Trust's Lanlay Meadows in the eastern Vale. It's a nice site where I've done some moth trapping in the past; a series of dry meadows (cut for hay) and wet meadows (dominated by Molinia, with some Carex swamp), bordering the River Ely. There are also thick hedges and some cracking veteran oaks. The site falls within tetrad ST07S, which had previous records of 48 bryo taxa from various sources (including a thatch survey by Richard Lansdown and Sam, and some urban recording by Barry in Bonvilston).

In some ways the visit was disappointing - the oaks were clothed in Hypnum spp but little else, and most of the riverbank trees were frustratingly out of reach (the banks were steep and topped with dense bramble). I did manage to grab a few arm's-length samples from riverbank alders by lying on the bank; these resulted in a few silty epiphytes: Leskea polycarpa, Homalia trichomanoides and Plagiomnium rostratum. Elsewhere, small streams crossing the site produced a fair range of species including Hygroamblystegium tenax. By the time I got to the sedge swamp it was almost dark, but the few grab samples I took home included some straggly shoots of Calliergon cordifolium, last recorded at the site on a CCW survey back in 1995 (photos below).

 

The tetrad total has risen to 72 taxa.

BBS Radnorshire, days 4-5

I'm just back from an enjoyable two days at my first BBS meeting. Today's outing with group 2 in almost constant rain didn't produce any outstanding bryological highlights, but was uesful nonetheless in gaining familiarity with species I've seen little of previously. The co-called Burfa Bog (SO2761) turned out to be more of a mesotrophic mire with lots of alder (though it was lovely to see several good patches of Aulacomnium androgynum on the bases of some of the alders). The nearby Burfa Bank was typical acidic woodland though someone found Anthoceros on a trackway. A village stop at New Radnor after that produced a good range of urban species plus some Leucodon sciuroides found by Mark Pool on a huge ash tree.

Yesterday was better both weather-wise and bryologically. After some Porella cordaeana and Orthotrichum rivulare along the Afon Edw near Cregrina, we moved onto Glascwm Hill and ascended a gully which held Pohlia cruda, Cladipodiella fluitans and tonnes of Bartramia pomiformis and Amphidium mougeotii. Much time was spent searching flushes on the hilltop and eventually Sharon Pilkington found some Hamatocaulis vernicosus, growing near Sphagnum contortum and Palustriella falcata. There were also some impressive patches of Calliergon giganteum, probably my favourite new bryo from the trip.

Lunch at Glascwm Hill

Calliergon giganteum

Hamatocaulis vernicosus

Pohlia cruda

It probably worked out for the best that I missed the Stanner trip as I'm not sure I'd have been ready for the Grimmia-fest, but I look forward to Barry and Sam's report.

BBS in Radnorshire - day 1

I joined 4 other bryologists on Maelienydd Common (SO17) in northern Radnorshire on the first day of the spring meeting.  Two other, larger groups were out elsewhere in the county (SO08 and SO18).  We started with a circuit of the central part of the common, passing neutral to base-rich flushes with Scorpidium cossonii, Campylium, Ctenidium, Breutelia and Sphagna, soon reaching a pool edged with 10,000s of Hamatocaulis vernicosus.  Its inflow stream held intriguing submerged Calliergon giganteum.

yes, that's all Hamatocaulis!

Mark Lawley had visited the site once before and had found Barbilophozia kunzeana (a S42 liverwort) then.  He spotted today's first colony, followed a little while later by another patch found by Lucia and Emily, and rounded off by a patch that I spotted (I've only ever seen it once before, at Julian Woodman's site in SW VC35).  It was a reassuringly distinctive thing, with oddly pinched-looking leaf lobes and a couple of underleaves visible on most shoots.  The habitat of Sphagnum mounds in neutral mire seems pretty consistent, but it is always very localised on a site and is easily missed.  There was also some Scapania cf paludicola with very arched keels, but there's ongoing debate as to whether our Welsh plants are actually that or extreme S. irrigua.  A candidate for Jamesoniella undulifolia (which Mark has found at 3 or 4 sites alongside B. kunzeana) may well just be Odontoschisma.

After lunch we headed slightly further west on the common and worked our way up a slightly base-enriched gully with Trichostomum brachydontium, Gymnostomum aeruginosum and Amphidium mougeotii but sadly nothing more exciting.  The highlight there was Aulacomnium androgynum on a lane bank: a real rarity in Wales with very few records in the last 10+ years.  The list was rounded off with a bevy of Orthotrichum on a bridge and trees.

With a couple of hours left until "tea time" we disobeyed Mark Hill's orders to stay in SO17, which we knew another party were also recording in, and headed west into SO07.  We chose some forestry west of Abbeycwmhir, largely because it wasn't included on the programme for the official SO07 visit on Tuesday.  Almost as soon as we parked I spotted Colura new for Radnorshire on a willow (Radnorshire lacks Colura hunters of Charles and Hilary's calibre!).  Typical conifer plantation species such as Plagiothecium curvifolium (new), Polytrichum perigoniale (new), Pohlia annotina, Diplophyllum obtusifolium and Racomitrium ericoides followed.  All in all, it was a good start to the BBS week in Radnorshire, and I don't even know what the other groups found...