February in Wales

I've moved and settled in Preston.  I miss being able to walk out of the door into the fresh green of the Berwyn Hills, but we have some lovely walks within easy reach, for example the Trough of Bowland and the Howgill Fells.  And we have a local Nature Reserve just across the road!

Great limbs were torn off by the gales

Last week I returned for a few days to my former village, to do a reccy for the Merioneth Nats programme. I managed to gate-crash my old Yoga class, but the next night's event, the local Book Club, was cancelled because of the weather.  Just as well - I was stranded by the gales high on a hill farm, cut off by fallen trees and with no electricity - I was given a bed and a bread-and-cheese supper, sitting by a roaring wood burner, and in great company with a  bottle of good wine!.  We had phone contact with the outside world, just enough to let people know what had happened.  And I had only gone there for a couple of hours programme planning with Andrew Graham!!

Sunset over Ynys Hir RSPB reserve

By Thursday morning the massive trees which had completely blocked the road the previous night had been cleared and I returned gratefully to civilisation - especially my toothbrush and clean clothes! With these adventures behind me, I next went to Theatr Clwyd to see a staging of Under Milk Wood.  Disappointing, I thought - neither a radio play, as it was intended, nor a successful staging  - I found the action simply distracting from the words.

So many root plates like this one -
yet another mature tree killed by the gales

On Friday I was able at last to get to some of the sites planned for 2014 and got permission to visit Llyn Oror near Corwen,  and then made tracks to Ynys Hir in Ceredigion.  It was lovely to be able to walk out onto the reserve in relative calm.  Damaged and fallen trees were everywhere and Penny Condry has lost a large Scots Pine [Pinus sylvestris] and a lovely  Balsam Poplar, Populus x gileadensis

Our first Merioneth Nats meeting of the season will be on 27th March at Llangelynin.  The suggested parking place is near Cae Du at SH569060. Full details of this year's programme, at least until the autumn are now on the BSBI website. There you will also find details of our search for an assistant Vice-county Recorder, someone to work with me for the foreseeable future. Help will be very welcome, especially as my knees now make it difficult to access some of the more remote parts of the county.

Scots Pines at Ynys Hir,
 the southern hills of Merioneth in the background

December Social

We held our annual Merioneth Nats social meeting yesterday at my house, Quillet, Llandrillo, sadly, for the last time, as I will be moving to Preston before Christmas.  Recording in the county will continue from a static caravan in a nearby site which we will be using as a base several times during the year.

Some of the usual members, enjoying the fireside food and chat 

As usual I forgot to take any photographs until it was almost too late but these give a flavour.  Twelve people gathered for soup, bread and cheese with other goodies including Polly's gorgeous home-made brownies and a magnificent chocolate cake brought by Paul.  We decided to stick next year to a monthly meeting, on the fourth Thursday of each month [except in January, as the caravan site will be closed then].

We talked a bit about data flow and how to avoid duplication of records, by submitting them through the Vice-county Recorder in the first instance. We also looked at the distribution map of the county, newly decorated with brightly-coloured
dots showing the number of records, black= 51-100, red= 101-150, blue=150-200 and green=>200 records.

I couldn't reproduce the dot map, but this distribution map, taken as a screen shot from the county Mapmate database shows pre and post 2000 species density.  We have a huge amount of work to do before 2020!!

Spurred on by these data, Martin, Clare, John and I decided to do our planned walk in an unrecorded square so we chose one near Parc, SH83X which had no tetrad records at all!  We came home triumphant with about 110 records in the bag enabling me to put a red dot on the map straight away!

Not bad for Friday, December 13th!

This seems a good occasion to thank all those who have turned out and supported my meetings month after month - also everyone who came to Caerdeon providing more records there, too.  I am looking for even more help.  I am getting rather creaky in the knees and would be delighted to have any offers of practical help in leading meetings in the more remote parts of the county.  Eventually I would like to find someone who would share the recordership and eventually take over from me, so if you feel you fit the bill, please say.  The requisite skills, it seems to me, are a degree of botanical knowledge and organisational skills, but above all a passion for botany - and, really importantly, knowing what you don't know!!!

Glanlafar 28th November

Paul Green and Andrew Graham in the field

We had no great hopes of the meeting on Thursday but it turned out a really lovely day.  It was a window in the cold, grey days of late November, mild and not too damp and we were six recorders eager to go. As usual we collected a number of ruderal records as we left the cars but then we reached the Open Access moorland where Paul and Andrew veered off towards an interesting-looking wet patch and immediately saw Rhynchospora alba, White Beak-sedge,     and Vaccinium oxycoccus, Cranberry. There was also a tiny stem of Menyanthes trifolia, Bogbean, [what else could it be?] and an equally minute piece of Drosera rotundifolia, Sundew.

Rhynchospora alba
Photo: John Crellin 

We followed an old drover's road towards the "Roman Practice Camp"  marked on the OS map at Dolddinas - I wish we had done our homework, as the Snowdonia National Park [SNP] website says: "This group of practice camps, about two miles south of Tomen y Mur, is among the best preserved in Britain." The  work of investigating the site by aerial photography has been done relatively recently and has exposed the extent of Roman activity in the whole area around Trawsfynydd.  Sadly, we didn't appreciate this importance as we ate our lunch - we simply noted the outline of one of the camps on the ground!

Lunch near the Roman Practice Camp

The extensive wet moorland of the Migneint is straddled by huge pylons carrying electricity for the National Grid and a new road has been created across the moorland to enable the re-cabling of the network. We picked up this road after lunch to reach some abandoned mine-workings where we were very pleased to find three Clubmosses, Lycopodium clavatum, Stag's-horn, Huperzia selago, Fir and Diphiastrum alpinum, Alpine Clubmoss.

     

                          

                                Huperzia selago

Lycopodium clavatum

The Fir Clubmoss was so small that I wondered at first if it could be a diminutive L clavatum. A reminder from "Poland" that L clavatum has very long [4mm] hair tips to the leaves was enough to confirm that we had both species.

With a flurry of roadside records from the indefatigable Mari as we returned to the cars at the end of a long day, we made the grand total of 134 records - a most satisfactory meeting.  We are sure that there would be more records to come during the summer months - for instance a previous record for the tetrad, Carex magellanica, Tall Bog-sedge, would not be easily found outside its flowering time.  Maybe it would be a good target for Caerdeon in August next year?

Reference:
Poland, J and Clements E J, 2009: The Vegetative Key to the British Flora

France in October

A month in France, neatly slotted in between two meetings of the Merioneth Naturalists/Grwp Natur Meirionnydd!

Falcaria vulgaris
Photo: wikimedia commons

I didn't stop botanising, of course and it was good practice identifying unknown plants using Poland, The Atlas Flore d'Auvergne and Grey-Wilson/Blamey's Flora of Britain and Northern Europe.  I was without internet access for much of the time [now, thankfully, sorted] so I couldn't get to the links Martin Rand provided for other French floras.  But I did track down a Phyteuma sp, a Rampion, [not in flower] with the aid of the white hydathodes at the tooth ends.  There was a lot of Geranium columbinum, Long-stalked Geranium,  which I never find in Merioneth, and more than one species of Setaria and some old friends, Campanula rapunculoides and Dorycnium hirsutum, both still flowering. I had some fun with Apiaceae, mostly past flowering, although  Daucus carota was almost the most common weed along the field banks. I identified Falcaria vulgaris, Longleaf and Pepper Saxifrage, Silaum silaus, but there were several which defeated me.

Soup addicts in the charming village of Charroux

A highlight of our time there was the Fete de la Soupe in the heritage village of Charroux where up to 40 local residents and chefs made their speciality .  We each bought our bowl and spoon for €7 and then wandered round the various stalls sampling the offerings - and very tasty they were!

Try our soup - it's different

                                                                                                                                                                             

Le Buget at nightfall

We had some nice walks and good food, but a lot

of the time we were working on the house and garden - the latter still looking much like a building site.  but we can now walk dry shod from front and back doors.

Moel Fferna 24 October 2013

A pause among the heather

How can we be so lucky?  After a week of very heavy downpours we set off in bright sunshine which stayed with us most of the day.  It was not the most productive botanical excursion but a really nice walk in lovely country.  We drove as far as the open moorland and then connected with the North Berwyn Way towards the summit of Moel Fferna.

On the North Berwyn Way

We left the path when David spotted a patch of bright yellow vegetation which looked promisingly different, and proved to be a dense stand of Narthecium ossifragum, Bog Asphodel, with Cranberry, Vaccinium oxycoccus but there were few other bog plants to be seen.  We then paid the price for leaving the path as we had to struggle through rank heather for much of the last part of the journey, so, of course we made that the excuse for a lunch stop.  Then off again through more difficult walking conditions - but at last the summit was reached!

Some of us did reach the summit!

We decided that as time was getting short and the terrain not very appealing we should return more or less by the route that we had come out - so we failed to botanise the small river which runs through the valley.  But there is always another day, and we were well ready for a cup of tea back in Llandrillo!

Records for the day were few, but it was good to find that we added 28 new hectad records in our score of 42 new species for the tetrad.

Cofnod conference

Cofnod [Welsh for a record] is our North Wales Local Records Centre and yesterday was their annual conference - a chance to meet recorders and ecologists from all over North Wales.

There was a good presence from BSBI - four Vice-county Recorders, including our retiring President Ian Bonner, who gave an interesting presentation on his progress towards an Anglesey [VC52] flora

Ian Bonner at Abermenai
Photo:Louise Marsh

I took a poster highlighting our local groups in North Wales [where every county now has one]

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BSBI Local Groups

There are ongoing programmes of field trips in all the North Wales vice-counties.

Everyone is welcome and it is a brilliant opportunity for people interested in plants to enjoy days in the field with like-minded people and there is always something new to learn!

 Anglesey VC52 [http://bsbi.org.uk/anglesey.html]

Anglesey Flora Group 

A field day with the Anglesey Flora Group

Merioneth VC48 [http://bsbi.org.uk/merioneth.html]

Merioneth Naturalists/Grwp Natur Meirionydd

Dolgoch Falls near Tywyn, Merioneth

Caernarfon Group VC49

Teaching in the field

FlintshireRecording VC51

Orchis mascula, Early Purple Orchid,

in Flintshire woods

Denbighshire Group VC50

Epipactis phyllanthes, Green-flowered Helleborine,
at Alyn Waters

------------------------------------------------

Nigel Brown, who is Curator-Manager of Treborth Botanic Gardens,  University of Bangor, gave a fascinating talk on his twenty years of moth-trapping in the Gardens. One of his students talked about his work on the polymorphism of the Common Marbled Carpet  as an example of the practical uses of this work  - apart from the continuing fascination of these beautiful insects.

Other talks on mammal, amphibian, reptile and bird recording showed the versatility of Cofnod's database and online recording facility. The Amphibian & Reptile Conservation Trust, in particular, uses Cofnod to produce distributional maps of their records.  The BSBI of course deals with a larger number of species/ records than many of the groups currently using Cofnod's database and we have our own Distributional Database, but I left the conference feeling confident that for botanists in North Wales anyway, the promise of reaching an overall data exchange agreement is now closer than before.

Cofnod put on another great day of networking and learning about the work of recorders of other biological groups.  Their hospitality was as ever generous and I am sure I am not alone in taking away ideas of ongoing benefit.  Many thanks to Roy Tapping, Aisling Carrick and all the team, for such a good show.

Roses Workshop, September 2013

Kate Thorne offered this taxonomic training workshop as part of the BSBI's annual programme of meetings, which are advertised nationally. Members of the Society are welcome to attend free and learn from experts at events which would be quite expensive if they were run, for example, by the Field Studies Council.  They are designed for all levels from complete beginners to vice-county recorders [VCRs]. Last year a Sedge training day was attended by at least four VCRs - and another meeting was designed to introduce people newly interested in botany to the important plant families of Britain

Ruth's amazing rose-petal cake

Kate has cultivated a wide variety of native roses in her garden in rural Shropshire, so we were able to see them "in captivity" before we went out to see them in the wild.  The day started with a small group - just six of us - enjoying coffee in Kate's farmhouse kitchen before we got down to work, with remarkable cakes, appropriately decorated by the creative Ruth Dawes with rose-petal icing!

Roses in Kate's garden

We looked at the three main groups within the genus, Dog Roses, Downy Roses and Sweet Briars, and the characters which separated them.  That made it so much easier to assign them to species - as with many groups it is much easier to recognise the salient features when all the extraneous information is cut away. We also discussed the complex, asymmetric reproduction of hybrid roses, in which the seed parent often provides four-fifths of the genetic material as against the pollen parent.

Rose identification near the Stiperstones

After seeing the plants in Kate's garden we went off to look at roses in several sites near the Stiperstones, and were able to practise our new knowledge. It's such a lovely area - and we finished off with a splendid tea at The Bog Visitor Centre, which is "a gas-lit Victorian former school..... one of the few remaining buildings of a lost lead and barytes-mining village." Their cakes were superb and sent us home well-satisfied with our day.

Thanks to Ruth Dawes for all the photographs