Home tetrad, ST17P

My home tetrad is mostly suburban houses and gardens, but the Taff river corridor passes through it, and Llandaff Cathedral lies within it, so it probably has a higher potential species list than most of the urban Cardiff tetrads. Currently, the species list is in the low 60s, a figure which has been built up incrementally while recording a few species here and there while exercising the kids. A visit to the cathedral by Barry also helped and added some interesting species such as Scorpiurium circinatum.

Yesterday I was pushing a sleeping toddler round Hailey Park in the pushchair and noticed that a large patch of bare earth, created when a new path was put in last year, had started to become colonised by bryophytes. This added not only a new species for the tetrad, Tortula truncata, but also one new for me Pleuridium subulatum. The latter was non-fruiting and I was concerned it might just be young D. heteromalla with straightish leaves, but after poking around under the microscope I found some of the dwarf male branches.It was growing alongside the Tortula and also Funaria.

The soil can't have been particularly acid but perhaps just a bit leached allowing T. truncata to thrive. I've not found any other acidophiles locally (except Ceratodon).