Last weekend was City Nature Challenge. It's hosted in iNaturalist. I am not a fan of this platform for many reasons that I won't go into here (I wish it was in iRecord) but I do like the challenge. So I have took part by sending my records in as casual observations (without photos that is - it's ludicrous to think I could take photos of even a fraction of what I record without completely wrecking the methodology). This way, they don't actually find their way back to the Sussex Biodiversity Record Centre, they get there directly from me in the same way as all my other data. Here is the current leader board for 2023, at the time of writing my records are not on there but they will be soon and I will update this blog when they are and the challenge is over for the year.
Some 23 'cities' in England are taking part. For the last two years Brighton has come top for the total number of species, and I have been pleased to play a big part in this. This year, I had more time free to do some recording for fun (not just using records from work). I recorded constantly for about 3.5 of the 4 days. You do get a bit of time to do the dets too, which are just finished. So my stats come out at 2801 records of 1014 species. This includes 570 invertebrates, 303 plants and 77 birds.
Day 1. A quick walk around BHASVIC Field with Karen first thing and then I headed to Woods Mill but it was sodden, so I just wandered around doing plants, bryophytes, molluscs and birds. I managed to refind Pepper-saxifrage in the valley field and saw a Cuckoo. Then I headed to Wiggonholt Common RSPB and things got really interesting. I targeted this site as one of the only significant areas of heathland within the project boundary. I recorded something like 150 invertebrates in the field over about four hours but it was the specimens that provided the most significant find of the weekend, probably my year. I had noticed lots (maybe around 15 or more) of paired up Nephrotoma craneflies flying up out of the Heather. I took a couple of males and when keying them out, I couldn't believe that it was coming out as Nephrotoma sullingtoniensis, the Sussex Tiger.
This cranefly has only ever been recorded three times and from one site - Sullington Warren. This small heathland is just the other side of Storrington to Wiggonholt, so it was certainly not out of the question. The book lists it as flying in June though, not late April. And lots of people have looked for it then and not found it. Could it have a much earlier flight period than people thought? I quickly got on to Alice Parfitt and told her all about it and she went and checked out Sullington (no joy) but did find it a third site - Hurston Warren. How amazing is this?! Especially as I just wrote a blog the night before about the importance of going out in April. Here are the rest of the microscope shots of this Endangered species.
Other highlights included my first heathland Enoplognatha mordax (still it marches on inland into all habitats, I had one in woodland the other day - first photo), Cercidia prominens, Xerolycosa nemoralis, Sibianor aurocinctus and Hypsosinga albovittata. I had another lifer int he form of a scarce dung beetle, Euorodalus coenosus and I refound Spathocera dalmanii there (photo). I found a few Dieckmaniellus gracilis too, despite the lack of foodplant.
Day 2 I spent on the chalk with Kim Greaves. We did the morning at Malling Down and the afternoon at Seaford Head. We mopped up! Malling Down provided some really exciting records, but mainly things I had seen there before. The first sample generated an almost adult Phaeocedus braccatus (1st photo) in Bridgewick Pit. And a whole host of cool harvestmen, including Trogulus tricarinatus again and this awesome Megabunus diadema (2nd photo). I got a lifer on the way into Green Pits. This is a rather messed up looking specimen of Thimble Morel (3rd photo) which people tell me is having a good year.
Onto the Coombe and I found an adult Pancalia schwarzella at one of its few Sussex sites and Kim spotted this carabid, Lebia chlorocephala. This is only the third time I have seen this beetle in 13 years, the other two records being from Malling Down in 2010 and Southerham in 2017. The Horsehoe Vetch feeding pollen beetle, Meligethes erichsonii, was also a lifer.
To Seaford and a very casual twitch of the White-crowned Sparrow before mopping up on some Hope Gap specialities. Heath Snail, Moon Carrot, Lasaeola prona, Pyrausta ostrinalis (photo) and (possibly new to site) Astrapaeus ulmi. Oh and of course, loads of freshly emerged Anthophora retusa males. Amazingly we saw one male sitting on an Adder but I just couldn't get anywhere near it to get a photo. Picked up Whimbrel on call, when you do this you need to have one ear listening out all the time.
And I think these are my first Sussex Thick Top Shells (Phorcus lineatus) from the rockpools off Seaford Head. This seems about as far east as they come in the UK.
Day 3 and I spent it at work and made over 830 records to add to the set. Libby Morris accompanied me for about half of the day. Highlights included Bombus humilis and another Enoplognatha mordax. Oh and Aulacobaris lepidii which I see quite a lot on farms. But the best record was actually on what I believe to be Sussex University Campus land when I was trying to get back to my car. I saw that Martin Harvey had picked this up a few weeks earlier and I was gripped, can't believe I then went on to see this very odd yet charismatic sawfly, Sciapteryx soror. Yet another lifer.
And what must be the most Syntomus obscuroguttatus I have ever seen in one sample, this is just a fraction what was in the tray.
Day 4. I am broken after walking 27 miles in four days with 15 kg of gear. I spend most of the day entering records and identifying specimens. The weather is bad with some storms but Karen and I head out to Woods Mill to do some wetland invertebrate sampling in the afternoon and we do quite well. We find the ladybird Nephus quadrimaculatus, loads of new spiders in the meadow and finally Nightingale! Which was also Karen's first.
Here is my distribution over the four days, including some roadside botany. I am exhausted, 30% of the way through my field work for the year already and I have entered 8734 records in April alone. This challenge was immensely fun but talk about burning the candle at both ends.
Will it be enough to get us into top place for species again? I hope so. Here is the breakdown of the species recorded.
Or as I initially called this blog post: Passive sampling vs. active sampling.
I am a big fan of moth-trapping, don't get me wrong. It's a great way of racking up vast numbers of records for a site in a short space of time without leaving the comfort of your home but just how valuable are these records? The moth trap we run at Southerham picks up lots of moths off the chalk but it also gets lots of moths from the nearby Lewes Brooks wetland that are definitely not breeding on site. There was even a Pine Hawk-moth recently and there is very little pine nearby.
When I am doing surveys of invertebrates, I treat moths like any other taxa. You never catch a 100 species in a day, no way near that, but the moths that you get are almost always species that are breeding on a site. In the last month Glenn and I have been carrying out a vegetation survey of Malling Down and I have been constantly distracted by moths during these surveys. Although this site is extremely well recorded, we have added quite a few rare and scarce species.
First is
Mecyna flavalis. This pRDB3 species is known really only from Deep Dean in Sussex, I went there with Michael Blencowe to look for it
eight years ago and have not seen it since. It occasionally turns up in moth traps but this is the first record in the field of a specimen away from Deep Dean. Frustratingly I did only see one, which is a lot less significant than two, but the habitat was exactly the same. Extremely tightly grazed south facing chalk-grassland. This moth was not here by mistake and I would expect we will see this moth here again soon.
Yesterday we found the smart looking Moitrelia obductella (pRDB3). It would seem that this is the first record in Sussex that wasn't in a moth trap and it was also new to Malling Down.
Also yesterday were two Chalk Carpets (known from the site but I always get an eight-figure grid ref for these as they are on the real S41 list).
And the nationally scarce b Dingy White Plume which is common enough on the Downs where there is Marjoram, also new to the site.
Yet finding larvae in the field is even better. You're guaranteed it's breeding on site if you find larvae. Not rare but Glenn spotted this Small Elephant Hawk-moth in a plot last week, the first I have seen of this species. It really does look a bit like a Grass Snake! It lacks the spine at the back of Elephant Hawk-moth but also the eye spots are more detailed and a bit more like Peacock butterflies eye spots.
I would love to see more people finding larvae and adults in the field. And just so you know you don't need a trap to find rarities, here is a quick reminder of the Purple Marbled I found at Seaford Head a few weeks ago when I didn't even have my net to hand, just a tiny glass tube.
And out of county but last week I found a Vestal in a bog in the middle of nowhere.
And if you target a specific food plant for inverts that only eat that plant then you often turn up the goods. I beat a Crab Apple at asite in Surrey recently and this Argyresthia ivella came off it, the only time I have ever seen this Nb species. What was perhaps more unusual was the bare-footed man who appeared out of nowhere playing the theme tune to Lawrence of Arabia on a flute. I would like you to appear doing this whenever I get a lifer from now on please. It was magical.
And I got a lifer in my own house yesterday morning whilst brushing my teeth. I looked up next to my dried Hops to see a little pyralid I didn't recognise. I had the back door open the night before so it must have come in that way. Or so I thought. On closer inspection it was an Indian Meal Moth Plodia interpunctella (it was neither spicy or filling I should add. Om nom nom). An adventive species, I think I found it right next to its food plant. They must be eating my dried Hops! It's quite a smart little beast though.
So you don't need a moth trap to find rare and unusual moths, but they will probably be mainly micros!
Excuse the poor quality photo but I had to share this one. Last Sunday was our third Ditchling Beacon Conservation Super Squad and as my back is anything other than super, I was on light duties. Which involved finding wildlife to show the team on a freezing cold day. I had a go with the suction sampler in the quarry at Ditchling and picked up a tiny (1.5 mm) spider. It wasn't until I got home and looked down the microscope that I saw this...
I am still terrified of ET as a 40 year old 'man'. I've gone all jittery looking through photos just to write this post. Anyway, money spiders with freaky heads are pretty cool but this one is really weird. What looks like nostrils are actually one of the four pairs of eyes. The palps (External Testicles) were pretty weird too. This is
Panamomops sulcifrons (my 373rd arachnid).
It's a bit of a chalk-grassland specialist but what's strange is that I didn't pick it up at all last year during a survey there, in fact there were only three species of spider with conservation status that went into the management plan. Even though I was using a suction sampler in that exact same spot. It just shows that ongoing casual recording is also a great way to add to our knowledge of sites. The only other record on a Trust reserve is from Malling in 2009.
This is the second Nationally Scarce species we have added to the site list whilst scrub bashing up at Ditchling. A great way to do practical conservation and learn about wildlife at the same time. Have a look
here if you want to sign up. It's always the last Sunday of the month and involves some steep and challenging work but is really rewarding. We also found three other species new to the site.
Yellow Archangel,
Moschatel and
Palmate Newt!
During a routine grazing assessment of Malling Down today, I decided to have a quick look for the mythical Red Hemp-nettle that has not been seen there for well over a decade (word of moth from a previous site manager) and it would seem not recorded there since 1987 according to the SxBRC and the reserve spreadsheet. I've looked for it four or five times to no avail. Then today I walked up to an area I thought looked suitable and recorded 17 plants! It really goes to show that persistence is key in natural history. It would have been really easy to give up but I had a hunch this species was still there, ticking along for all these years. Perhaps it's having a good year or in previous years I was maybe too early.
I've only ever seen this plant at Rye Harbour, it's stronghold in the county along with Pevensey Bay and Pagham. What's all the fuss about though? Well this plant is classed as Critically Endangered on the Red List, basically the highest level of assessment you can get before going extinct. So it's great that this little plant with big flowers has been re-found at Malling Down after all these years, as it's now only known from a few dozen sites according to Plantlife. You can read up on it
here. At Malling, the 'natural' (it's an old quarry) creation of chalk scree formed by erosion in the quarry is all that is needed to keep this habitat open, although long-term it will probably need some scrub clearance. Being an annual, it must have been here all along as I don't think it's been lurking in the seed bank.
It's a poor competitor, and likes bare, loose chalky or sandy soil. At Rye Harbour it grows on the vegetated shingle, at Malling, it's at the bottom of a huge quarry, right where I always thought it would be! Why I have not seen it before, I don't know but I suspect I have been looking too early. Here is a shot of the habitat.
We GPS'd 17 plants in all, 13 in one cluster, then three and then a singleton, all quite close together. As the 1987 area was given only as a six figure grid reference, we now have more detailed records to eight figures of where the plants are growing. Suitable looking habitat further up the slope held no more plants. There is another area in the quarry that would take a bit of getting to that might be worth a look though. Brilliant news!
Other plants new to the reserve today included two Hairy Buttercups growing in the bottom of a damp dew pond and some Pellitory-of-the-wall at the top of the quarry. Walking around the quarry we saw several Galium Carpets. A bit like a Common Carpet but more black and white and with a slightly concave leading edge to the fore-wing.
Last Thursday night, Alice put the MV Skinner trap out at Southerham and we recorded 95 species of moth (229 moths in all)! Five of these species were new to me and four were new to ALL Sussex Wildlife Trust reserves. This is remarkable as we have now recorded 1240 species on the reserves. We only started trapping at Southerham last year so many of these 95 species will be new to the site. I'm afraid I was a little carried away with the scarcer micro moths so I am afraid I forgot to photograph the three hawk moths that we had in the trap!
First up is Ethmia dodecea which I originally wrote down as Ethmia terminella - we had two of these last week and this is much more likely feeding on Viper's Bugloss. Ethmia dodecea feeds on Common Gromwell which as far as I know is not present on Southerham and Malling Down. However with that crazy heat we had, moths were dispersing all over the place. I haven't seen this moth since about 2004 and I'm glad we now have it on our reserves.
Then we had this Crescent Plume which I have seen at Benfield Country Park where I saw a similar amount of moths many years ago. It feeds on Restharrow which IS just up the hill from the office.
This Hollyhock Seed Moth is nationally scarce (Nb) and feeds on various types of mallows. These are in nearby gardens and hedgerows.
And finally Piniphila bifasciana which feeds on pine! No pine near Southerham! But that photo was too awful to be published. What's the largest number of species you've ever had in a single unattended MV trap? I'd love to know what the record is too!
This post is mostly about the value of casual recording. On Monday and Tuesday this week I need to walk around our three chalk-grassland sites Southerham, Malling Down and Ditchling Beacon on a compartment by compartment basis to check on our winter grazing. Now I've also been a fan of casual recording on top of the more structure monitoring and surveillance but since I put the spreadsheet together, it's really made me realise how little we know about our sites. So where ever yo are, if you always record the most interesting species of the day, you'll likely be recording something significant.
On Monday I walked up Southerham and the first beetle I encountered was new to the reserve, the common dung beetle Aphodius fimetarius flying around a cow pat. Not much happened then until I got to Bible Bottom where I saw my first Wheatear of the year on top of an isolated Hawthorn. I lifted my binoculars to this larger and paler than usual Wheatear to see it was a Great Grey Shrike! The first for the reserve and my first self found one. Amazingly we now have records of Great Grey Shrike at 10 out of the 32 sites. That's the same as Curlew, Med. Gull, Teal and Woodlark and more than Golden Plover. We only have records of Lesser Black-backed Gull at 11 sites!
Then on Tuesday I was walking up the Coombe at Malling Down when I saw a huge ungainly spider walking awkwardly towards me over a ridge. I was amazed to see it was a male
Purse-web Spider Atypus affinis on a spring vacation from its subterranean lair! What a treat, I've only seen this spider twice before but in quite different circumstances so this was really exciting! We haven't had a record of this before at Malling and it's the first record on a reserve since 1968 at Iping and Stedham!
Here is another shot from the side. The Coolpix isn't doing too well these days since I dropped it in a rock pool. I'm planning on getting a new camera next month though and it's NOT going to be another Coolpix!!! Anyway, love this shot as you really can see how odd this spider. Even the male's abdomen has like a weird armoured cap on top. Huge pits in the cephalothorax too. Whatever will turn up next?
It's how many bugs do we have of course! And by that I mean Heteroptera, the true bugs that I am county recorder for. It's not so easy to do that for other taxa from the Recorder 6 output as the hoppers, plant-lice and aphids are all mixed in too but I have removed the offending species for this analysis. So, I thought it was also about time I put together a definitive county list (both for East and West Sussex) as well as the reserve list. And my list. So many lists.
So the Sussex list is up 5 species to 429 including the tiny introduced Buchananiella continua I recorded at Ebernoe in the summer. Estimates were right in saying East Sussex is the richer county, almost certainly due to more open habitats like Rye that do well for bugs. East Sussex has 387 species with West over 40 species behind on 346. It's important to remember we have two counties and that a first for West Sussex is just as significant as say a first for Surrey. East is also more recently recorded, the mean year of the last record per species is 2007 compared to 2002. With 2008 overall which is not bad really. Sussex Wildlife Trust reserves have 486 bugs (but that's ALL bugs). Just the Heteroptera comes out at 308 species. My Heteroptera list is 255, almost all of which is in Sussex.
Guess what the best reserve is for Hets? Surprise, surprise it's the greedy Goliath Rye Harbour with a whopping 146 species. It has some bugs found nowhere else in the county like Arenocoris falleni. Followed by Malling at 112, Ebernoe at 90, Woods Mill 86 and the unexpected jewel Flatropers at 74.
The most frequent species at 16 of the reserves is the tiny but super abundant Plagiognathus arbustorum. Again I'm surprised it's not a shield bug, this is a bug you are unlikely to identify if you haven't made any effort with mirids and I certainly don't have a photo of it. After this it's Hawthorn Shieldbug, Capsus ater and Sloe Shieldbug at 16. The unique species account for 97 of the 308 species.
Across the county, the Dock Bug is the most frequently recorded bug with 639 records. The number of Heteroptera records ha risen to 16977 from 12011. A 41% increase in two years. This is in part to several new and prolific recorders but a big part of this is iRecord. Which leads me to the shieldbug atlas that we have been working on at the SxBRC which I'll be talking about at Adastra in a few weeks. Watch this space for an update on this project really soon! Really interesting to see how poorly recorded our most recorded and easy to identify bugs are. Not for long at this rate though. We are definitely in a new age of bug recording in Sussex!
What road do you walk down?
October 1988: I made my first biological record aged ten (without really knowing what a record was) with the help of Ewart Gardner. It was a Goldeneye at Blithfield Reservoir.
September 1991: Steve Cooper showed me a moth trap for the first time on my school roof. Angleshades and Canary-shouldered Thorns blew me away.
October 1996: Partly through frustration at my A-level biology teachers ("that's not a rock-rose Graeme, it's a buttercup" - really? Is this what it's gonna be like if I do biology at university?) and partly for reasons that will forever remain a mystery, even to me, I started a degree and masters in astrophysics at Sussex University.
July 2001: I started my career in conservation at Dungeness RSPB.
May 2016: I returned to Sussex University to teach students from all over the UK about entomology.
I have just had one of the most rewarding weekends! Six month's ago Dr Alan Stewart of Sussex University asked me and a number of other specialists to come and help teach students in entomology at the campus as part of a BENHS event. For me, coming back to the university after all these years was very strange. Especially as I often used to look across from the maths and physics blocks up to the biology department thinking, "I really should be over there". I remember seeing the Biology Road sign all those years ago. So to go back and teach entomology, all be it just for a weekend, provided a great deal of catharsis for me. I gave talks on beetles, spiders and biological recording. The weirdest thing here was the lines and lines of calculus on the chalk boards, all very familiar but totally forgotten by me.
Anyway, the real stars of the show were the students. I was amazed at how keen they were, many of them turning up with reference collections and lots of equipment! On the first day we spent our time in the field by a dew pond on the campus (next to where twenty years ago Richard Attenborough gave us an introductory talk and I specifically remember him mentioning how important extra curricular activities are! - this could not be more true in the field of entomology) and the chalk-grassland at Stanmer Park. Alan and I had our petrol and electric suction-samplers respectively and this produced a wealth of material to show students. I was encouraging students to take carabid specimens to key out (the other half of the students split off with Mike Edwards to look at bees and flies).
I even managed ten new beetles with the help of Peter Hodge but it was back in the lab where the real work started walking students through keys for the first time. It was so great to see students get their first correct identification. One student picked up what I thought was a small Harapalus in the field which turned out be a male Ophonus. I helped really only by dissecting the aedeagus but the student managed to card the beetle and mount the aedeagus and we tentatively put the name Ophonus schaubergerianus which might even be new to East Sussex. I'm going to get a second opinion on this one. Sadly I didn't manage to get many photos of specimens or students. I did manage this photo of Chris Bentley and I at the microscopes.
On the second day we opened some moth traps. The highlight was the most well hidden Mullein, perfectly adapted to hiding on pegs.
We did more survey work on the campus and the highlight was finding yet another of the RDB1 Cassida denticollis. This area is clearly a hot-spot for this very rare beetle as we recorded it at Malling Down and Southerham last year. We picked it up (and two much commoner Cassida) in the suction-samplers. What was great was seeing students in the field come back with specimens they had caught such as Green Hairstreak, Rhinoceros Beetle, Andrena fulva, at least eight species of shieldbug and the saproxylic weevil Phloeophagus lignarius. The whole weekend was so exciting and I really felt like I helped make a difference. Well done to all the students and teachers alike, I hope this becomes a regular event!
Four years with my head in the stars seems like just a drop in the ocean now for me as I continue my life long journey down biology road.
Last month I blogged about a survey we are conducting at Malling Down and Southerham and this week we carried out our fourth visit and it was rather good. The highlight was hearing Chris Bentley bellow "DOROS!!!". Not knowing if he had caught it yet, I legged it down into the Green Pits at Malling to find Chris looking very pleased with himself and something large and wasp like flying around inside his net. I've always wanted to see the Phantom Hoverfly Doros profuges as it's one of the few species that has acquired an English name, albeit via the BAP process. It's a cool name none the less. It is genuinely rare and difficult to find and is quite a convincing wasp mimic, even moving like a wasp. Thanks also to Chris for the photo.
However, that was not the rarest find of the survey. I swept a bee that got James and Mike excited and this turned out to be the RDB1 Halictus eurygnathus! This species really is restricted to the chalk around Lewes and Eastbourne and is so poorly known that we were informing the autecology of the species just by sweeping it off plants it's currently not known to nectar on. Also in the Coombe at Malling Down James recorded the Na bee Andrena fulvago. Cistus Foresters and Rose Chafers were also recorded and we were all in agreement that the site couldn't look better with a wide range of structural diversity and nectar being available. Here you can see masses of Common Rock-rose, Dropwort and Bird's-foot Trefoil. Go an have a look this week, it's amazing!!!
Also of note was this larva. It was by far the most abundant larva we were sweeping and was present in all six areas surveyed. The only noctuid moth I could ever remember seeing up there in any numbers was Dusky Sallow. A quick Google search and we soon realised this was indeed the larva of Dusky Sallow. Another tiny piece of the infinitely large jigsaw puzzle added!
This summer another battle is unfolding above the streets of Lewes. On one side, Malling Down with its steep sided Combe and scrubby Green Pits and on the other Southerham Farm, with its secluded valleys and ludicrously named Bible Bottom. Yet which one is 'better' for invertebrates? There is only one way find out! FIGHT! Well, no. Actually it's to carry out a repeatable and standardised survey that can inform the management of these two superficially similar yet surprisingly different sites. That's exactly what we are doing this year and we have recently completed the third visit...
Once a month from March until September we are recording all the species we can find within six discrete areas (three on Malling and three on Southerham). We always record for the same time across all six areas. The sites are very rich, particularly in scarce weevils, and the total number of species recorded so far stands at 293! Above is the smart but diminutive (3mm) weevil Tychius schneideri. It only feeds on Kidney Vetch which is abundant at Southerham on Bible Bottom but mostly missing from Malling (conversely Malling has all the Common Rock-rose). So how do the two sites compare? So far Malling is winning with 201 species and Southerham is on 179 species. This difference is likely to be down to the lack of scrub at Southerham but that's not to say we want Southerham covered in scrub (but some scrub is good). A better way to compare the site's qualities for invertebrates would be to compare the proportion of species with conservation statuses but that will have to wait until the survey is completed. Remarkably, only 87 (30%) of the species were recorded on both Malling and Southerham (so not that similar after all or just an example of how hard invertebrates are to find? Or how many species recorded occur at very low densities?). Out of the six sites, the Green Pits at Malling is currently coming out best of all with 102 species. It has the most scrub of all the plots, the least amount of south facing slope BUT a hugely varied topography. It's an old quarry on the north of the site.
Perhaps the most extraordinary difference is the abundance of the RDB Carthusian Snail at Southerham which has so far not been recorded at all from Malling. In many parts of Southerham it's the most abundant snail and was recorded in all three plots there during the first visit. The sites are only separated by a few hundred metres of golf course!
Also as Southerham lacks Common Rock-rose, it also lacks the Cistus Forester that's present at Malling Down. Both sites are covered in Knapweed though but it's only Bible Bottom at Southerham that has the Scarce Forester that feeds on the Knapweed!? So which site will come out on top? I believe Malling will end up with more species but Southerham is likely to have a higher proportion of scarce species and species associated with chalk-grassland. We'll have to wait and see though!
On Sunday, morning I met the new county moss recorder, Tom Ottley. We went to have a look at a suite of VERY small acrocarps on a small south-facing bank on the north side of Malling Down. Now to mix things up a bit, I was doing this about 20 hours into a 24 hour fast. A rather dodgy stomach (that the doctor has just told me is norovirus) meant I had to take some drastic measures. Having a very high metabolism, this was very tough but I did find looking at mm tall plants a welcome distraction. So first up we have a plant that only this week Tom recorded here as a first for Sussex, it's the nationally scarce
Microbryum starckeanum and is typically 1 -2 mm!
Just when you think things couldn't get any smaller, Tom said 'There is something growing UNDER the
starckeanum'! It took a little while to see, but there indeed were the prostrate shoots of the even smaller
Microbryum curvicolle.
However, it was the third
Microbryum that has to win the prize for most unfortunately named moss of the day. With shoots less than 1 mm tall, here is...
Microbryum rectum in all its glory!
Another very nice looking moss was this nationally scarce Pleurochaete squarrosa with some leaves showing their characteristic shrivelled nature when dry.
And also this
Common Aloe-moss Aloina aloides with its distinctive leaves.
And here is the man himself on the south facing bank! I added nine acrocarps to my list today (4143) and also managed to learn an entire new community in the process which will help me to help the Trust conserve these little known plants!
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