Parc le Breos

Conocephalum salebrosum - Pellia endiviifolia mat

I was passing Parkmill yesterday so I stopped to look at the Parc le Breos roadside cutting identified by Graham a week or two back. It was a bit drier than I expected and there was in fact very little in the way of tufa formation, but along with locally frequent Encalypta streptocarpa, Eucladium verticillatum, Pellia endiviifolia, Leiocolea turbinata and occasional Jungermannia atrovirens  and Tortella tortuosa were a few additional species of local interest, notably a few good patches of Conocephalum salebrosum and Didymodon spadiceus, both previously with just single records for Gower made during Sam’s Bishopston survey.

quite distinctive large shoots of Didymodon spadiceus,
when wetted produced straight, loosely patent leaves (>4mm long)

fortunately a few capsules were present
showing the diagnostic short peristome

Also growing there was this little puzzler, with scattered plants of what looked good for Pohlia lutescens. The presence of tubers and decurrent leaves seemed to limit the number of possibilities, however the cell measurements were a little larger than those given in Smith, the leaves not as toothy as shown and the habitat seemed atypical, growing on powdery (humid but not wet) soil in deep shade below an overhang growing with L. turbinata. So, I’m suspecting I may be on the wrong tracks with this one, but not sure what other options there are? Help!

Radyr Quarry revisited

In fading light yesterday afternoon I finally managed a follow up visit to Radyr Quarry, having looked at the southern end of the quarry face in December (see here). I only managed to access a relatively small area at the northern end and this was similar in character to what I found before, with quite a bit of Leiocolea turbinata on soil-capped ledges and a few small patches of Eucladium verticillatum. Only two additional taxa were found, Trichostomum crispulum (which was common) and a Conocephalum species. I've only seen C. conicum in my local area but this patch had a distinct salebrosum look to it. The thallus has distinct grooves on the dorsal surface, as seen in the photos below. 

I wasn't 100% sure from this feature alone, so I also checked the hyaline cells at the thallus margin which, according to the Szweykowski et al. paper which first separated the two species (available here), should be 1-2 rows wide in conicum and 3-4 rows wide in salebrosum. In the photo below (click to enlarge) they are mostly 2 cells wide.

 

So this does appear to be salebrosum, though I'd like to have some fresh conicum to hand for comparison. As far as I know all the previous VC41 records since these species were split in 2005 have been from northern NPT, RCT and Merthyr Tydfil, so this site would be a bit of an outlier.

George, seems you are still missing some records from your version. Updated maps of Conocephalum taxa as follows: