Hot Moss

I was walking around Hay-on-Wye yesterday and on approaching the Rose and Crown pub I noticed that the building has recently been re-pointed – I half expected the tuft of Hedwidgia ciliata that has sat on the edge of the porch for at least 15 years (and I think first reported by Jonathan Sleath), to have been cleaned off during the works, but it was good to see it is still present.

Unfortunately it is probably too late for any mosses on the building adjoining Hay Castle as during restoration work the roof tiles have been stripped and stacked and look like they have been brushed clean. 


Stone-tiled old buildings in this area of Wales and England have long been known to support interesting assemblage of uncommon mosses that thrive in the harsh conditions on sunny roof-tops.   Some years ago Plantlife produced a leaflet to help raise awareness of the importance of these roof-top gardens and it is still available on their web site: https://www.plantlife.org.uk/uk/our-work/publications/rooftile-mosses - perhaps i’ll send one to the Hay Castle Trust as they are probably unaware of the biodiversity significance of their old tiled roof and I might send a refresher to Cadw as well.  


I remembered that last year I took some photos of roof-top mosses at the wonderful National Trust – owned Cwmmau Farmhouse, near Brilley, in that very Welsh part of Herefordshire.   I was going to make a post then, but the weather suddenly entered a very wet spell and it seemed less topical.  Anyway, the photos I took are still on my phone…..   I am not 100% about the Grimmias, but some may be G. laevigata and more rounded tufts G. ovalis – perhaps someone out there has more confidence.     

If you like 17C. buildings, then visiting this farmhouse is a must and the mosses are a bonus.  Unfortunately it is only open to the public one week each year, but for the rest of the time it is available as a holiday let (although you will need to dig deep into your pockets, unless you are able to share costs among the 10 people it can accommodate).  


I you want to see some of these mosses close-up, then best not to pick them off porches etc, but instead have a wander around buildings and look on the ground for small pieces that have dropped off the roof.   If you are lucky, you might find some H. ciliata var. leucophaea, which has been seen at Dore Abbey in Herefordshire and a couple of sites in Monmouthshire.  I haven’t knowingly seen var. leucophaea myself, but looking more closely at the Cwmmau photo, perhaps some of the Hedwiga there is approaching  var. leucophea?

South Wales gets Bigger

Having recently moved to Wales I thought I’d share some of the bryophytes near my new home but it would be stretching it a bit to call it South Wales!  We now live in Goginan which is about 6 miles east of Aberystwyth in one of the many valleys that penetrate into the Cambrian Mountains from the coast.  The stream here is the Melindwr which joins the better-known Rheidol a few miles downstream.  There is much evidence of mining in the valley, the local spoil heap having good quantities of Lophozia incisa under heather but none of the real specialities of some of the lead mines in the area.  Lane banks as you start walking upstream are notable for an abundance of Diphyscium foliosum and rock outcrops often have some Rhabdoweisia crispata cushions.  Further still up the valley the sides steepen and there are extensive rock outcrops.  Both Hedwigia stellata and H. integrifolia can be found here, the latter in impressive sheets over wide areas of rock.  Judging from the comments in Jeff Bates’ excellent book, this must surely be one of the best spots for it in this part of Wales so far discovered.  Many patches are over a foot across.

 

Also on these rocks are numerous cushions of Cynodontium bruntonii.  The mamillose cells are readily apparent in section but the way the leaves get markedly longer going up the shoot is proving to be a useful indicator in the field, at least for separating it from Dicranoweisia cirrata.  No rare Grimmias as far as I can see but will keep looking.

 

The valley opens out into moorland at the top with some very old sunken trackways.  The banks of these have fine colonies of bryophytes, in some places with good patches of Anastrepta orcadensis easily picked out from surrounding Barbilophozia floerkii by the dark brown gemmae.

On the vertical peat edges of one of the tracks, where cut by vehicle tyres, are tiny patches of Cladopodiella francisci, difficult to find buried under filamentous algae and surely much overlooked in this most unglamorous of habitats.  Another under-recorded moss on these tracks is Polytrichum commune var. perigoniale.

  

 I’ve spent many hours identifying Racomitrium spp.  To start with I couldn’t find anything other than R. affine but after cutting innumerable leaf sections, R. heterostichum was finally found but only on the rocks along the ridge at the top of the valley with all material from the valley sides proving to be R. affine.  Also on rocks at the top are many small cushions of R. sudeticum, hardly resembling the other members of this group.  I'll try and put some notes together on some of these segregates, including R. obtusum I hope, but I'm still learning at the moment!

I’ve followed in Sam’s footsteps to a few other sites nearby, particularly where basic rock intrudes through the very acid shales that dominate the geology here.  Bryn Bras proved an excellent spot and I refound most of Sam’s goodies but Sphagnum skyense eluded me.  I was able to add Cephalozia pleniceps from a small bog on the moorland above the cliffs and there was Barbilophozia atlantica on a boulder by the river.  The Bwlchglas mine still has Ditrichum plumbicola but clearly much reduced from 2005 when Sam described it as being abundant in the identical spot.  A walk to Craig y Pistyll via Banc y Garn got no further than Banc y Garn as the basic outcrops and flushes there were just too tempting with sheets of Preissia quadrata pointing the way.  Not much new for the site although a large colony of Rhabdoweisia crenulata was a nice way to end the day.

More news soon.  Tom.

Tremadog rocks

An evening walk after bog surveying near Porthmadog finally gave me the chance to explore the amazing cliffs and hanging woodlands above Tremadog.  I only scratched the surface of this extensive area, and I'm sure there's plenty more to be found.  Most of the time I was up on the open, sunny clifftop rocks, where Campylopus pilifer and Hedwigia integrifolia were surprisingly common.  The former grows in dense cushions in rock crevices and its thick shoots are reassuringly different to the common C. introflexus, whilst the latter sprawls on sunny rocks and its lack of hairpoints is immediately different to H. stellata.

One area held extensive patches of a sprawling Racomitrium with very short hairpoints.  This was growing close to typical, hoary R. heterostichum and looked incredibly different, yet they are treated as a single species in the Census Catalogue!  Also nearby was muticous (pointless) R. obtusum, which is again treated as part of R. heterostichum in Britain.  The short-pointed, narrow-leaved plant is Racomitrium obtusifolium f. trichophorum, which I discussed in The Mosses and Liverworts of Pembrokeshire.  I have now found it in several places on coastal tors in Wales, from Pembrokeshire to Harlech and Tremadog, but never inland.  There seems to be a pattern developing in records of this distinctive-looking moss...

A scramble down into the upper part of the woodland above the Hospital revealed abundant Frullania fragilifolia and Plagiochila bifaria as well as some Marchesinia mackaii.  A large lichen on a boulder may well be the uncommon Cetrelia olivetorum, which may well be new for the site (already known to hold a good example of The Lobarion).  There are still vast explored and potentially bryophyte-rich habitat in the Tremadog area, as well as past generations' rarities to be rediscovered (some localities were kept secret and subsequently slipped out of bryologists' knowledge).  Oh to return!

Mining for moss

Visits to three Ceredigion lead mines last Friday produced several nice things.  I'll start with 3 showy species: Racomitrium elongatum, Tetraplodon mnioides and Hedwigia stellata.  The Racomitrium is pretty frequent in the Cambrian Mountains and its long reflexed hairpoints are a good pointer (before microscope checking).  Tetraplodon is present on most Mid Wales mines, where it grows on scats and bones.  Hedwigia stellata is surprisingly sparsely distributed in Ceredigion, and the two tufts I saw were on tarmac - the first time I've seen it on this substrate.

 

Prize for smallest and grottiest goes to Ditrichum plumbicola and D. lineare.  The two colonies of D. plumbicola were both "new" - the 15th & 16th sites for this species in Mid Wales - in part because nobody had specifically looked for it on those sites.  The D. lineare was also "new", and was unusual because it's generally found on natural sites in Wales rather than on mines.  Ditrichum plumbicola has blunt-tipped leaves and plane margins, whereas the D. lineare has acute tips and slightly recurved margins.

 

Prize for rarest may go to D. plumbicola, but with a bit of luck I'll be able to confirm that a colony of very toothy Cephaloziella is C. nicholsonii.  This would be only the 5th Welsh locality for this British endemic.  It was growing at the foot of an old wheel pit wall, and it's interesting to note that the first Ceredigion colony was on a wall on Cwmystwyth mine (found by David Holyoak).

I'll add some microscope photos of the Cephaloziella soon. 

Cairngorms

I had the most fantastic couple of days walking in the western Cairngorms last week. I tried not to get too distracted by bryos but did make a few records and I have quite a few samples still to go through (hopefully including some Kiaeria species). There was way too much snow in the north-facing corries to investigate these for snowbed species, and some of the humidity-demanding species were probably under snow too. The richest area proved to be the riverbank at Tromie Bridge. A few highlights below...

Antitrichia curtipendula on a riverbank alder (Glen Tromie)

Aulocomnium androgynum just a few metres away on humus-covered rocks

 

Hedwigia sp (tbc) again just a few metres away from the above species on riverbank rocks

Ptilium crista-castrensis in open woodland slightly further downstream

Racomitrium lanuginosum heath with Cladonia uncealis at over 1000m on Carn Ban Mor. I was impressed by the extent of the Racomitrium heath up there.

And finally, just to give a flavour of how good the walking was...

Something Spanish

A couple of samples collected from the Costa Brava a few weeks back, during a brief excursion following my niece's wedding. It's not beyond the realms of possibility one of these species could turn up in Glamorgan, the former more likely given it's occurrence in Monmouthshire. [NB both sample id's unverified]

Hedwigia ciliata var. leucophaea

Plasteurhynchium (Eurhynchium) meridionale

Hedwigia striata refound in Eryri (Snowdonia)

Until the 1990s, British Hedwigia were pretty easy to identify: if they had hairpoints they were H. ciliata and if hairpoints were absent they were H. integrifolia.  Lars Hedenas revised the genus in northern Europe in 1994, leaving Britain with four taxa: the common one turned out to be H. stellata (below left), the much rarer H. ciliata had two varieties here, and H. integrifolia stayed the same (but subsequently changed genus to Hedwigidium).  Roll on to 2010, and Portuguese researchers published good evidence that there is an additional species in western Europe: Hedwigia striata (below right).  This has turned out to be relatively widespread in Portugal, but intriguingly it was described new to science by Warrington bryologist William Wilson with an 1829 Type Specimen from Llyn Idwal in north Wales.

Hedwigia striata was an obvious target for last week's British Bryological Society meeting in Eryri (see #EryriMosses on Twitter for other finds made during the week).  We marched past Llyn Idwal on our way to Llyn y Cwn and didn't see any Hedwigia, but a search of lakeside boulders along the lake's north shore in 2013 had failed to reveal anything other than the common H. stellata anyway (a search of the south shore could be worthwhile).  Groups also checked for Hedwigia at Llyn Bochllwyd and Llyn y Cwn in the Glyderau, and at Ffynnon Llyffant and Llyn Crafnant in the Carneddau, but the only place with anything different was Ffynnon Lloer (below) in the SW Carneddau.

Ray Woods had collected Hedwigia "ciliata sensu stricto" from there a few years ago, before H. striata had been resurrected, so we had high hopes that this natural, un-dammed lake might have good rocks.  Sure enough, Barry Stewart found a short-pointed Hedwigia on the first rock we checked, and subsequent searching on the south shore produced at least 3 more colonies along with Bryum muehlenbeckii, whilst a 4th was found growing alongside Pterigynandrum filiforme on a rock on the north shore.  We assumed this was Ray's H. ciliata, but I started to get excited when I noticed that all of the dry leaves had very obvious striations/pliccations along their length.  All four colonies we found showed this feature, and subsequent microscope checking confirmed that this really was H. striata, rediscovered in Eryri 196 years after the last record and on a new lake (it may well have gone from Llyn Idwal because that lake has been modified somewhat by a dam).  An additional feature mentioned in Flora Briofitica Iberica is the presence of long papillae on the basal leaf margin, and the Ffynnon Lloer plant shows these even more prominently than the FBI illustrations!

My next task is to revisit other British specimens of Hedwigia ciliata from upland lakes and other habitats, particularly some I collected from Llyn Gafr on Cadair Idris a couple of years ago (specimen in BBSUK).  This is an outstandingly interesting habitat with plenty of rare and scarce species, but one that has been rather under-valued bryologically in Wales.  In recent years bryologists have recorded the following by Welsh mountain lakes: Bryum muehlenbeckii (Nationally Scarce), Grimmia anomala (Nationally Rare), Grimmia muehlenbeckii/austrofunalis (Nationally Scarce, please don't flame me for sitting on the fence with taxonomy), Grimmia ramondii, Odontoschisma elongatum (Nationally Scarce), Orthotrichum rupestre, Pterigynandrum filiforme (Nationally Scarce), Racomitrium macounii (Nationally Scarce), Schistidium agassizii (Nationally Scarce) and probable Schistidium trichodon (Nationally Scarce).  Interestingly, most of these have only been found on un-dammed, natural lakes and most are present on fewer than 5 rocks on any lake.

I know this blog is called "South Wales Bryophytes" and this moss is in North Wales but two regular contributors (Barry and me) were involved in the search!  Barry has some much better photos of the leaf striations, which I hope he might add to this posting. [The dry and wet images added below are the best I have demonstrating the plicate leaves - BS]

[Two more photos of the small sample I brought home provide better resolution - BS]