Slade

View along the cliffs west of Slade, the arrowed spot showing a slope below an outcrop where I've
previously recorded Cephaloziella calyculata plus a similar range of species listed below.

It seems like an age since I last looked at the South Gower cliffs, but on the weekend I managed to steal an hour and a half so checked out a section of cliff with virtually no records. I spent the first hour scouring promising looking ground on some outcrops east of Slade but failed to find much of interest. The last 30 minutes thankfully proved to be more productive with species noted in the sward shown below (SS49188551) including Aloina aloides, Bryum donianum, B. kunzei, B. ruderale, Cephaloziella calyculata, Microbryum starckeanum, Pleurochaete squarrosa, Rhynchostegium megapolitanum, Weissia controversa var. crispata, etc..

 Putative Bryum kunzei - I do worry about this one, even though it looks pretty distinct!

Didymodon fallax and the much larger Pleurochaete squarrosa 

Bryum ruderale was particularly common in cliff-top turf in this section

Non-bryological interest was provided by one of the bryoparasitic Pezizales, which keys out Octospora coccinea. This is said to be common in the UK although only 7 records are shown on the NBN. The host was in rather poor condition for identification, but I looked like Bryum dichotomum.

More urban bryos

I've had few opportunities to get out this week, so despite all this exciting Splachnaceae banter, it's back to the humble Pogonatum aloides, which I managed to add to my home tetrad SS59Z this week. I found a small patch in fruit on soil/rock exposure at a building plot in Penyrheol Road no further than 140m from my house, growing along with two other common species that were surprise tetrad ticks; Dicranella heteromalla and Fissidens viridulus, taking my largely urban home tetrad total to 109 taxa.

this plot has been on stand still for about 4 years,
the concrete base in the foreground is covered in Bryum argenteum

Here's the Marchantia polymorpha subsp. ruderalis on tarmac in Princess Street, Gorseinon.

The Pogonatum challenge Glam-style

It appears the two common Pogonatum species are much scarcer in the lower lying areas of Glamorgan as well as Carmarthenshire. The maps suggest both are absent from the Vale (George's challenge!) and lower land of the Gower peninsula (my challenge). Charles and Hilary have recorded them in a good proportion of the monads they have visited in NPT, so I guess altitude and geology are important factors? Finding P. nanum is of course the real challenge! It's on the county list, but we have no records in MapMate yet.

A challenge for Ian

Why is Pogonatum aloides so much more scarce in the Llanelli area (SE Carms) than the rest of VC44?  At the time of the Flora we assumed this was the result of selective collecting by Ian and Nigel, and that somehow their bags of moss hadn't included Pogonatum.  Subsequently I have recorded in the majority of the tetrads in SE Carms and have only found a few P. aloides sites.  So, Ian's challenge is to find some more populations of this very distinctive species!  It grows as a colonist on more or less bare soil on lane banks.

Most of the gaps in the north-west are unvisited tetrads, whereas most of those in the south-east have been looked at to some degree by me.