Cors Bryn Mawr

I finished work up past Lampeter with an hour or two of evening light to spare last week, so revisited the small but rather nice bog perched up on the ridge on the Carmarthenshire side of the county boundary with Ceredigion. I'd found some Sphagnum medium, a rarity in the county, whilst trying to learn Sphagna there six years ago. I wondered if there was anything else interesting lurking in this seemingly little-visited spot. 

I must have learnt a few more Sphagna since then, as I found several patches of Sphagnum molle along a few metres of channel on the south side. This is another species with few Carmarthenshire records. The extensive lawns of Sphagnum cuspidatum were edged with plenty of S. papillosum, and Kurzia trichoclados, Odontoschisma sphagnii and Cephalozia pleniceps were on samples of this and Sphagnum subnitens. Sphagnum quinquefarium was more of a surprise - a single patch was tucked under a self-set sitka spruce sapling in a perhaps unusually wet location for this species. Another small sitka had managed to catch some Usnea articulata.

Sphagnum molle

Sphagnum quinquefarium

Usnea articulata

Small base-rich flushes on the slope to the south-east had typical species including Scorpidium scorpioides, S. cossonii, S. revolvens and Campylopus atrovirens. I couldn't find any of Tom's mosses on the forest tracks nearby, all samples proving to be Barbula convoluta.