Tâf Fechan [SO01K square bash]

Left vc42, right vc41

As I was in Merthyr on Friday and I had a spare hour, I made a quick sojourn into SO01K, which was on a paltry 10 species. Even within my limited time slot I was able to quickly add an additional 64 species to the list for what is undoubtedly a much richer partial tetrad. There was also interest before reaching my target the square, when crossing Pontsarn viaduct I noticed a nice colony of Grimmia orbicularis on the Brecon side, new for vc42 according to the blog county lists.

Once in the square a large decorticated log was found to hold a good colony of Riccardia palmata (below; photo 1) and the limestone outcrops & boulders supported abundant drapes of Neckera crispa on dry cliffs with sheets of Conocephalum salebrosum in damper sections. The most interesting species of the drier sections were Loeskeobryum brevirostre (photo 2), Scapania aspera (photo 3) and Platydictya jungermannioides (photos 4-7), the latter new for Glamorgan with 3 small colonies noted in crevices, but with plenty of the same habitat, it seems likely there will be a strong population at this site.

 

Interest on the wetter sections was provided by Cololejeunea calcarea, Eucladium verticillatum, Leiocolea bantriensis (below; photo 1) and Seligeria acutifolia (photos 2 & 3). Well worth a revist - park on the vc42 side of the bridge, cross over and drop down from the Glamorgan side - very easy access.

 

 

Chasing ghosts

I headed to Hensol Forest yesterday afternoon with thoughts of Ghostwort in my mind. There is a lot of Sphagnum in the wet woodland just to the north of Pysgodlyn Mawr, which seemed a good place to search for it. As it turned out, however, there wasn't a lot of birch in the woodland and it didn't take me long to roll back (and replace) the carpets of Sphagnum from around the base of the few birch trees - unsurprisingly, no Cryptothallus was forthcoming (all I found was a small toad).

This left some time for general recording so I had a poke around the rotten logs nearby, with one particularly splendid example being almost covered in Riccardia palmata and a few smaller patches of Nowellia curvifolia.

On the other side of the lake, a large willow had a tuft of Ulota which looked promising for calvescens - and so it proved when checked under the microscope (the rows of elongated cells inside the leaf margins were very clear).

These and a few other additions took the total for tetrad ST07N from 75 to 85 (the majority of the previous records coming from a visit Sam made to Pysgodlyn Mawr exactly five years earlier).

I headed a bit further south into ST07M, which had a list of only 6 bryophyte species. Following a small stream through the mixed woodland bumped this total up to 52, including Orthodontium lineare, a bit more Nowellia and, more excitingly, two patches of Loeskeobryum brevirostre.

Among these records L. brevirostre, U. calvescens and R. palmata are all new for the Vale - which highlights just how under-recorded this part of the county is.

Swamp Feather-moss near Merthyr

At 340m asl, a population of Amblystegium radicale to the north-west of Merthyr was found to be well established at more than twice the maximum elevation given in the new bryophyte atlas. Whether or not the species is extending it's range eastwards, upwards, or just that it is now better understood is debatable. Direct associates around the margins of this very small reservoir included Drepanocladus aduncus and Marchantia polymorpha subsp. polymorpha. 

104 taxa were recorded at this rural industrial site with a good mix of calcicoles and calcifuges represented taking the totals for SN90Y and SO00D onto 156 and 65 respectively. Other species of interest noted, which give a flavour of the site, included Aneura pinguis, Aulacomnium palustre, Campyliadelphus chrysophyllus, Campylium protensum, Carex arenaria, C. divulsa d., C. hostiana, C. pilulifera, C. pulicaris, Climacium dendroides, Didymodon ferrugineus, Ditrichum gracile, Homalothecium lutescens, Loeskeobryum brevirostre (photos 1 & 2 below), Pyrola rotundifolia (photo below), Rhytidiadelphus triquetrus, Sanionia uncinata, Scapania irrigua, Syntrichia ruralis var. ruraliformis, Tortella tortuosa & Weissia controversa var. densifolia.

Nedd-fechan in pictures 1

Part of a length cliff with lots of, mostly non-fruiting, Seligera (photo 2), though Sam did manage to find a few with capsules [of acutifolia (photo 3) and donniana (photo 4)]. Also there were good patches of Cololejeunea calcarea (photo 5) all along the same face.

Lower down the valley, where the woodland flora reflected more neutral-acidic conditions, there were areas in which Loeskeobryum brevirostre pretty much blanketed every surface on the woodland floor, along with with frequent Rhytidiadelphus triquetrus and a little R. subpinnatus.

Grimmia hartmanii was noted on millstone grit boulders and would appear to be thinly but widely distributed through this section of ravine.

Penyclawdd Wood revisited

Penyclawdd Wood (SO40J/P) is part of my Dingestow Court home patch, and was one of the first areas where I recorded bryophytes 17 years ago.  Since then I have made many visits, but these largely stopped when Bea was born (7 years ago) and I have only looked once since 75% of the wood's conifer blocks were clearfelled in 2012.  That visit, in 2013, produced Dingestow's only Sphagnum record: a single patch of S. subnitens.  Yesterday I checked two other blocks of clearfell, one of which has been almost overwhelmed by Ulex gallii (!!) whereas the other remains relatively clear.  There was no Sphagnum, but species of note in the clearfell/regrowth areas included Archidium alternifolium (photo), Fissidens exilis (photo) and Fossombronia pusilla. 

 

A damp, clay track that was once heavily disturbed by farm traffic is now kept open by pedestrians (and deer) because vehicles use the tracks that were put in for conifer extraction.  The sedge-rich vegetation on the clay track holds locally abundant Campylium protensum (photo), scattered Bryum pseudotriquetrum (photo) and some non-fertile Weissia with decumbent shoots that is probably W. squarrosa (photo).

There were various blocks of broadleaved woodland among the conifers, and these now stand proud of the clearfell.  One area of 30 year old birches surround a spring where Chiloscyphus pallescens and Fissidens adianthoides grow alongside Valeriana dioica and various other calcicoles.  The floor of this 'birch grove' holds abundant Rhytidiadelphus triquetrus (very rare around Dingestow) and is the only site locally for R. loreus (photo) (a few shoots 15 years ago, but now a couple of small patches) and Loeskeobryum brevirostre (photo) (one hand-sized patch about 7 years ago, but now abundant over >5x5m!).

 

It is fascinating to be able to revisit this very diverse area of woodland after so long.  It used to support White Admirals, Glow-worms and many different moth species.  More to revisit over the next several years.

Loeskeobryum habitat and distribution in Neath Port Talbot

Loeskeobryum brevirostre, Cwm-hwnt forestry, NPT

Here's an update on the distribution of Loeskeobryum brevirostre in Glamorgan (tetrads), at least according to my current Mapmate records, All records (except for one in the Pyrddin Valley, Brecon side of the river) are for NPT, where it is most frequently associated with larch, particularly on reclaimed coal tips and open cast. There is plenty of this habitat elsewhere in Glamorgan, e.g. in Bridgend and RCT. There may be less suitable habitat in Swansea but the Penllegaer plantation may be  good place to look for it. This is a relatively new ecology for this species but its association with coal tips has been mentioned before. In the Pyrddin Valley it is found in a more 'native', humid-ravine type habitat.

Apparent distribution of Loeskeobryum brevirostre in Glamorgan

Other interesting species that occur in similar places include Sanionia uncinata.

Sanionia uncinata. Cwm-hwnt Forestry

Loeskeobryum in conifer plantation (again)

Hilary and I spent an afternoon checking one of NPT's Fir Clubmoss sites. Apart from the well known Craig y Llyn populations, they are all in forestry areas which are currently under threat from careless, collateral damage associated with wind farm development, plantation felling and forestry roadworks etc. The Rheola forest population (one plant!) is a bit of an outlier and occurs in a tetrad with over 100 bryophyte records (virtually all in plantation areas), so we didn't expect to add much - and we didn't. However, we did add Racomitrium heterostichum and we admired some of the roadside willows which were covered in epiphytes; some trees with at least 15 species on their trunks just from leisurely counting. From a distance, one of them looked as if it had some nice patches of Eurhynchium striatum (not unusual). Purely by chance I thought it was worth checking in case it was Loeskeobryum brevirostre. It was.

Patches of epiphytic Loeskeobryum brevirostre (e.g. within rectangles delimited by white stars)

 This is our third record for this species in NPT plantations, but the first time we've seen it as an epiphyte and in this particular case well established fairly high up on the trunk. The apparent association of this species with conifer plantations, also mentioned in the Atlas, is interesting.

Loeskeobryum brevirostre (Short-beaked Wood-moss)

There are very few records of Loeskeobryum brevirostre in Glamorgan. The map below (drawn from the Mapmate datatbase) shows 3 dots in the Vale of Neath, although the top dot is actually on the Brecon side of the Afon Pyrddin. Two other occurrences which (for some reason) are not in the database, and therefore not on the map, are Clydach Vale, RCT (Sam Bosanquet) and Morlais Hill, Merthyr (Roy Perry and Alan Orange). Even then it's just 4 known sites in Glamorgan, which suggests to me that it may be under-recorded, particularly when compared to neighbouring counties.

Mapmate Distribution of Loeskeobryum brevirostre in Glamorgan

Loeskeobryum tends to be associated with the sorts of humid woodlands that are typical of the South Wales valleys, occurring with familiar species like Hylocomium splendens, Rhytidiadelphus loreus, Dicranum majus and Plagiothecium undulatum. Sam describes it as a moss which is irregularly encountered and of unpredictable occurrence in Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire and Roy Perry described it as rare in the Flora of Glamorgan, citing only the Morlais Hill records. The most recent records for Glamorgan (Briton Ferry Woods and Maesgwyn) are pretty disjunct and, interestingly, in Larch plantations. Larch plantations (there are still some left!) often support a luxuriant bryophyte ground flora and I have often thought of them as surrogate sessile oak woodlands in South Wales. Perhaps it is not surprising that Loeskeobryum has found a home in them. 

It's easy to pass over Loeskeobryum when it occurs with other robust woodland mosses like Rhytidiadelphus spp. In habit it's somewhere between Eurhynchium striatum and R.loreus.

Loeskeobryum brevirostre, Briton Ferry Woods

However, once you've got it under the lens the pleated leaves with distinctive, long, narrow points are unmistakable.

Loeskeobryum brevirostre, Maesgwyn

  Mature conifer plantations may not seem like the sort of place to look for species like Loeskeobryum brevirostre, but they are surprisingly good habitats for all sorts of bryophytes. 

There must be more of this species in Glamorgan.