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Tuesday, December 21, 2021

A welcome find

In October I received a report from Julie of Stag's-horn Clubmoss on Llangoed common. Several members of the recording group got there to check this out before I did and my group was initially dumbfounded to discover that we couldn't find it despite having good grid references. So after a while we decided to give up at one of the couple of  locations reported and set off for another only for Claire, who was leading, to call back that she had found it not 100m from where we had given up. Either the satellites were wonky that day or on the day of the earlier reports and we had been focussing too much on exact grid refs and managing to miss the populations while toing and froing!

Stag's-horn Clubmoss, Cnwp-fwsogl corn carw or Lycopodium clavatum
at Llangoed common

Never mind - once found and with our "eye's in" we established that the population was very large - certainly a more established and abundant population than had been found in such a habitat in this county for many years.

The common itself is a delight and very carefully managed - the Bracken control (which was active at the time of discovery) being very effective at creating conditions for the Clubmoss to thrive.

And on the opposite bank of the stream the grassland was home to many wonderful Waxcaps - it's a well we had Ray with us to name them all.

Scarlet waxcap or Hygrocybe coccinea at Llangoed common


Steph, who visited later on, found native White-clawed crayfish in the stream - adding to the good habitat rating for the area.

This picture alludes to our initial confusion!