The Far West

Llyn Llynerch  photo: Eric Jones

Another wet day  - and another bog!  I wanted to look at Llyn Llenyrch [SH6537] which we had failed to reach last week, so I made a date with Heather Garrett to go there last Friday.  It is very acid and very wet - but unspoiled and remote and surrounded by a fine bog and we made a good list. 

 The highlights were lovely patches of Hypericum elodes, Marsh St. John's-wort, with very small amounts of Carex pulicaris, Flea Sedge, and C. dioica, Dioecious Sedge [all  female]

Rain water lying on the leaves of Hypericum elodes,
with Juncus acutiflorus, Eriophorum angustifolium  and Carex echinata  

In the lake itself we found lots of Lobelia dortmannia, Water Lobelia, just coming into flower, with Littorella uniflora, Shoreweed, along the shore line.  We did a bit of grapnelling but the water level was very high and we didn't even find any interesting 'bits' washed up.  As we were deciding to give the weather best, we looked along the roadside verge and were rewarded with patches of Wild Thyme, Thymus polytrichus, and an Eyebright, Euphrasia confusa.




The next day I led a botanical walk [in Welsh] from Plas Tan-y-Bwlch to Llyn Mair for Llen Natur and Cofnod. It was their Bioflits event, the idea being to combine an open event for the general public with intensive recording of a site.  All sorts of wildlife are included from spiders to mammals to higher plants and bryophytes.  


It went quite well but I might have been a little more coherent if I hadn't got lost on the 'reccy' and had to miss lunch!  We walked through the great Japanese cedars, Cryptomeria japonica, amid some typical woodland plants but some odd ones too.  The strangest, which I had never seen before, was Sheep-laurel, Kalmia angustifolia, looking perfectly natural beside the lake.  Its single remaining flower was enough to help us to identify it later.  A strange record to add to the county list!