Brechfa Forest

I picked up a job in Brechfa Forest on Wednesday, monitoring some translocation work which had been undertaken in association with the wind-farm. Populations of Pohlia drummondii and Campylopus subulatus had been moved when new tracks had been constructed a few years ago, and distributed along two unsurfaced tracks. Both had quickly dwindled as vegetation cover increased, and the Pohlia had disappeared from both receptor sites by 2019. It persists on one of the two ditch-side locations found in 2019, although it appears to be much less frequent than it was then, and less abundant than the Pohlia bulbifera alongside. 

The Campylopus hangs on in small quantity on one of the receptor sites - a damp, shaded track, where it struggles alongside Sphagnum denticulatum, S. cuspidatum and Polytrichum commune. I found a few plants of Atrichum crispum in one of the few more open patches here. 

Atrichum crispum

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given its abundance on forestry tracks further north, a deviation from the monitoring spec revealed Campylopus subulatus to be abundant and sometimes dominant on various sections of secondary track, which are still surfaced with local shale and more acidic than the new limestone ones as a result. Tom tells me that there may be cryptic species within a subulatus aggregate, and Ceredigion specimens are amongst those being sequenced at the moment. Still no Bryoerythrophyllum campylocarpum to be found with it, but there was some B. ferruginascens (including an all green form which had caused us both confusion when I first collected it from a site near Aberystwyth last month). Some fruiting Weissia rutilans in a few places as well, which may or may not still be locally rare.

Typical Campylopus subulatus track