Pendine and Llanteg

A morning's work carrying out an ecological watching-brief at the Pendine Range this week, to ensure that the petalwort population doesn't get overly disturbed by ongoing works. Although the yard at the end of the test track here is the most heavily disturbed part of the dunes and carries the rarest species....

I'd found Aloina rigida here before Christmas, and it was now fruiting happily on the top of a small sand pile. New to the site, and the county, was Bryum dyffrynense - two patches of which were in a particularly unglamorous location.

Bryum dyffrynense and location by concrete blocks

Aloina rigida and location

On my way home, I stopped near Llanteg on the Pembs / Carms border. I wanted to check on the Fissidens rivularis in the stream near Ledgerland which I'd found here a few years back - the only site in the county. It was still on two rocks, despite a new concrete bridge having been built between the two.  

Fissidens rivularis on rock in stream

Heading downstream, there are some rocks which I'd never been to - the frost-shattered remains of a valley-side tor in the Millstone Grit series. Sam had refound an old record of Dicranum scottianum here, as well as some D. fuscescens. However, I wasn't expecting it to be quite as interesting as it proved to be. 

Ledgerland boulder-field

After an hour, the list which I'd put together would have looked respectable for one of the tors on Mynydd Preseli. The two Dicranums, Plagiochila punctata, Scapania scandica, Bazzania trilobata, Barbilophozia attenuata, Frullania fragilifolia, Polytrichastrum alpinum, Bryum alpinum, Racomitrium lanuginosum, R. ericoides, R. fasciculare....most of these were new hectad records, and highly disjunct from the nearest populations. Lepidozia cupressina - a second county record - was a particularly nice find alongside the abundance of L. reptans. Straying off the bryophytes, there were a few patches of Hymenophyllum tunbrigense, new to the south of the county, and a good looking lichen flora to my untrained eye, including Bunodophoron melanocarpum.

Bunodophoron melanocarpum

Tunbridge Filmy-fern

A small shaded outcrop below the boulders had a few small tufts of an Orthodontium alongside the filmy fern, which should rightly and properly have been the rare O. gracile in this habitat. After some fiddly sectioning though, I sadly concluded that there were stereid cells, and it was instead the non-native O. lineare. There was some compensation however, as a few strands of Isopterygiopsis pulchella were included in the sample - a new VCR. 

The icing on the cake, however, came in the form of a Lophozia tipped with reddish-purple gemmae hiding under one boulder. Unless I'm very much mistaken, this is Lophozia longidens - previously considered extinct in Wales. (Subsequently confirmed by Nick Hodgetts as this - the first Welsh record since 1968, and a long way south of any previous record). I can honestly say that I thought Pembrokeshire's vegetation had lost the capacity to surprise me - it's nice that there are still a few secrets to reveal!

Isopterygiopsis pulchella

Lophozia longidens