Moss Bros

Posted by Graeme Lyons , Monday, 20 February 2012 21:44

We recorded the outdoor session of Episode 5 of our podcast yesterday. We went to Heyshott Down with Bruce Middleton and had a great day. I added seven new species of bryophyte to my list with some quite scarce species and some very, very small species. First up we have Entodon concinnus. I have often thought I might have mistook this for the much more widespread Pseudoscleropodium purum but now I have seen it, I think I would recognise it again.

Here is the tiny liverwort with a silly English name. Top Notchwort Leiocolea turbinata.
 

Probably the rarest bryophyte of the day is this Riccardia palmata or Palmate Germanderwort. It grows on old rotting logs but is mainly a northern species according to the texts.

We then went into the woods where there was little other than loose soil and scree under the trees. Bruce showed me some tiny weeny mosses growing on lumps of chalk. This tiny moss is English Rock-bristle Seligeria calcyina and appears to be mostly restricted to the chalk in the south east of England. This really is a tiny moss. One or two millimetres 'high'.

But not as tiny as this Fissidens. It's Fissidens gracilifolius next to a giant 5p pence.

I ended the day on 3778 species. I have saved the most impressive till last though. Here is Rhodobryum roseum again, or Rose-moss, but these ones were much bigger than the ones I saw in the cemetery at Midhurst.

Posted in , , , , ,

0 Response to "Moss Bros"

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)
Nature Blog Network