The benefits of SMNR

 

I have spent the last two days attending a course on Sustainable Management of Natural Resources (SMNR) with some NRW colleagues at Beechwood House in Newport. This venue is in the middle of a large and varied Victorian park in ST38J - a completely un-recorded tetrad for bryophytes. Searching during two half hour lunchbreaks revealed a remarkable diversity of mosses and liverworts in Beechwood Park: 74 species!  Highlight was a patch of Platygyrium repens on a Sycamore, new for Newport county and the southern half of VC35.  Epipterygium tozeri was also new for Newport, I think, but has 30 widely scattered previous VC35 records.  Other species of vague note included Syntrichia virescens on a Lime trunk, Scleropodium cespitans on tarmac, Gyroweisia tenuis on a damp wall, Didymodon vinealis on drier walls, Microlejeunea ulicina on a Holly (2nd Newport record), Riccia glauca on a bank, and Fissidens crassipes, Rhizomnium punctatum and Pellia epiphylla in the stream valley.  I still haven't explored the nearby St Julian's Park, which looks to have even more diverse habitats.

Platygyrium repens fruiting

A lunchtime wander from the NRW Monmouth office up the Wye Valley to Priory Grove confirmed how biogeographically different this part of Wales is from the areas of Carmarthenshire I have been exploring over recent years.  Lane banks held Eurhynchium schleichei, which has only one known Carms site, and the commonest Orthotrichum was O. stramineum.  Highlight was several patches of Platygyrium repens on horizontal Hazel branches, looking a lot like Hypnum but a bit more bronzy and with abundant branchlets.  To my amazement, one of the patches sported 4 nearly ripe sporophytes: the first time I have seen them and a very rare occurrence.  There are lots of bits of this wood and the adjacent Fiddlers Elbow SSSI that need a good search, so lunchtime walks could be very interesting over the next few months (both for bryophytes and microlepidoptera).