More Teesdale surveys

We finally got a relatively dry week up here so the farmers in Upper teesdale have all been busy 'hay timing'. Although sadly for the hay meadows (but not for the farmers) they mostly make haylage rather than hay nowadays, as you can see from the bales wrapped in plastic.

The hill in the background of this shot has one of the biggest juniper woods in the country.

Here are some plants from today from a remarkably species-rich habitat along Sand Sike. The habitat was unusual (at least to me) so I did a quadrat (recorded all of the species in a 2m x 2m square). I got 58 species including several rare arctic alpine species! In NVC terminology the habitat is CG10c, which is rare in Britain and mainly occurs in the Breadalbanes in Perthshire. It must be extremely rare in England.

Tofieldia pusilla (Scottish asphodel) is a very attractive little plant but very easy to miss as you can see from the size of it's fully-grown leaves here.

Here's a big clump of it with 3 plants in flower which makes spotting it a bit easier, but not much!

We've had Blysmus compressus (flat sedge) before (see entry for 3 July 2008). There were thousands of plants along the sike today.

There were also lots of plants of Parnassia palustris (grass-of-Parnassus) which has just started coming into flower in the last week or so.

John

What happened to the summer?

It has been nearly 4 months since our last blog. First we had computer problems back in April and all of our blog pictures dissappeared. It took ages to put them back on again and there were some we couldn't re-find. So I was a bit fed up with the blog for a while, but we're friends again now. Since then I have been flat out working. I went freelance at the end of April and for much of the summer I have been surveying 10 farms in upper Teesdale, doing condition assessments of their SSSI 'interest features' and completing 'Farm Environment Plans' to guide new 10 year management agreements under the 'Higher Level Stewardship' scheme.

This has been a very interesting area to study in such detail. Upper Teesdale is well known for it's colourful flowery habitats. The riverbanks along the Tees and the Harwood Beck are particularly colourful and herb-rich.

But of course Teesdale is also particularly famous for its rare plants and rare habitats. Bird's-eye primrose is an easy one to spot when it is in flower. This is a highly localised plant in Britain, being more or less confined to Cumbria, Durham and Yorkshire. It is quite abundant in some places in upper Teesdale.

Much rarer in England is false sedge Kobresia simpiciuscula, which otherwise is confined to parts of the Scottish highlands in Britain. Both of these plants occur in species-rich calcareous flushes (M10) in upper Teesdale, often with other rarities like Scottish asphodel, variegated horsetail and alpine rush and with other nice plants or 'axiophytes' like grass-of-Parnassus, tawny sedge, marsh arrowgrass, common butterwort and lesser clubmoss.

However many of these typical 'calcareous flush' plants grow in other types of species-rich vegetation in Upper Teesdale including U5c, CG10b, CG10c, M26b and various types of vegetation transitional between M10 and something else, including especially M23a. In many parts of the Upper Teesdale SSSI different habitats with these species have been incorrectly identified in the past by English Nature staff who tended to always label the habitat as M10 whenever they encountered these species. This has made my job of assessing changes in the habitat difficult as in many cases I find the species, but a habitat other than a calcareous flush at the point marked on the map. It is often difficult to work out if the habitat has genuinely changed since it was last assessed or if the habitat was mis-identified before.

John

The colours of spring - mosses and flowers

Seems like we've been waiting a long time for spring in Northumberland. It sort of seems to be happening now. If I didn't know any better I could even have been tempted to say it was warm today. Here are a few random pictures from recent botany trips.

Ceratodon purpureus is a very common species but a colourful sight when it is in fruit. Many mosses fruit in spring before the vascular plant growing season gets going.

If you zoom in and look closely you should be able to see the 'struma' just below the capsules on at least some stalks. A struma is a bump on one side of the top of the seta (stalk) just below the capsule, that looks a bit like an Adam's apple.

Here is a colouful patch of mosses on a sandy edge of the River South Tyne, near where we live. The red one is Bryum pallens which is often frequent in places like this, which are contaminated with heavy metals from past mining activity. To the right of the top of the big red patch is a patch of yellow-green Philonotis fontana. The leaves of this species look opaque or matt compared to the green species to the right, which has shiny leaves. This 'matt' appearance usually means that the leaf surface has lots of tiny bumps on it so the light does not get reflected back off the surface. It took me about 5 years to be able to see the difference between matt and glossy leaves in the field, but now it seems straightforward, and I wonder why I couldn't see it before. It is a really useful character for field identification if you can spot the difference. The third species with the shinier green leaves and a hint of red underneath is Bryum pseudotriquetrum or Bryum bimum.

Always nice to see elm flowers for various reasons. One of the first flowers of spring. Nice to see elms surviving, even if we don't have many large trees any more. And as it flowers at a time of year when I'm mainly looking for bryophytes, I like to see it as it is one of the best tree species for epiphytes.

These mountain pansies are from a heavy metal contaminated (Calaminarian) grassland by the river South Tyne. This is one of the special habitats of our area and a UK BAP habitat.

Alpine penny-cress is one of the specialities of this habitat and was also in full flower today (sorry for the rubbish photo). The two other special vascular plants you find here, spring sandwort and thrift, look like they are about to come into flower in the next few days. Apart from woodland ground flora, this habitat must be the most flowery habitat around this part of the world so early in the season. It should start to be at its best in about 2 weeks time.

John

Ptyxis makes the top 100!

Got an email the other day saying we've been included in a list of the top 100 botanical blogs on an American website http://www.online-college-blog.com/index.php/uncategorized/top-100-botany-blogs/.

There's quite a mixture of subjects covered by the other blogs including some bryophyte ones, which is good to see.

John

Blink and you'll miss it!

On one of the wettest days of a very wet summer/autumn last year, I spent an afternoon looking for mosses and liverworts in Druridge Bay - see http://www.druridgebay.org.uk/. This was part of the 'Bioblitz' event orgainsised by Northumberland BAP. When the weather is so foul it can be dispiriting doing this kind of thing and it was a real shame for the event, as it meant that (unsurprisingly) very few punters turned up.

However, our dedication (or bonkersness) paid off as we found a very rare moss! Aloina rigida is a nationally scarce species that has never been recorded in Northumberland before. The map below (from the NBN website) gives an over optimistic impression of how common it is, as most of the dots relate to records made prior to 1950. So, not only is it scarce, it has also suffered a big decline in Britain. The next nearest previous records to Northumberland are near Edinburgh and in Durham where it has been seen twice, in 2001 and sometime before 1820!

Distribution of Aloina rigida in Britain & Ireland.

As you can see very well from the picture below, it grows in bare, stony places. The picture is from Michael Luth's excellent CD called 'Bilder von Moosen' (pictures of mosses). Ok, where it grows is not actually 'bare', it is sparsely vegetated. These kind of very open habitats are undervalued but very interesting ecologically. Many specialist species of mosses, liverworts, lichens and invertebrates thrive in these areas. One of the few positive changes to nature conservation policy in recent years has been the recognition of these habitats now as UKBAP habitat, 'open mosaics on previously developed land' as they are now officially called.

If you ignore the stalk (seta) of the spore capsule, these plants grow to no more than about 2mm high, so they are not exactly 'showy'. They are also ephemeral in nature, adapted to be able to colonise new areas quickly and probably not lasting on sites for very long as they become more thickly vegetated. As the nearest recent populations are quite a distance away from Druridge Bay the spores that gave rise to the plants we found must have travelled a very long distance by wind to get there.

John

Winter buds

One of my most memorable experiences from when I was first leaning my botany was doing a 1-day training course on winter tree identification given by Nick Bertrand. Before then I had no idea that you could use characteristics of twigs (especially the buds) to identify trees in winter. I remember getting really enthused for botany after that and I also remember enjoying showing off what I had learned to my fellow MSc students in Oxleas Wood in SE London.

Some of the characteristics that are useful are: shape of buds (rounded, pointed, conical, needle-like, etc.); number of bud scales; arrangement of buds on the twig (opposite, alternate, clustered); pattern of bud scales (opposite, herringbone, random); colour of buds (can either be very useful or very misleading!); shape of leaf scars; etc. Once you get familair with these characteristics it is fairly straightforward to identify most British species to Genus, although it is more tricky to go to species level in a couple of genera. In some ways, it is easier to identify trees in winter than at other times. Winter is a good time to do your first visit when surveying a woodland, as when the trees are naked it is much easier to assess the structural characteristic of the wood and see signs of past management. The most difficult time of year for tree identification is early spring between the time when buds start to elongate and young leaves are in the process of forming.

Here are some pictures of buds from a few species that I took yesterday down the track from our house to show some of the variety.

Ash is probably the most easily recognised tree in winter. The large terminal buds are sooty-black and conical - nothing else has buds anything like this. Note that the lateral buds are much smaller and opposite.

Willow is the only genus that has buds with only one bud scale. Lime buds looks a bit similar but have two scales. The willow buds can vary quite a bit in colour (brownish-yellow, orangey, brownish-red or purplish) on different trees of the same species, at different times of year or even on the same tree. Apart from one or two species, the others are difficult to tell apart from the buds. Most willows have alternately arranged buds.

Hawthorn have quite small buds with very small leaf scars just underneath. When I was first learning, I used to find it very difficult to tell hawthorn and blackthorn apart from their bud and twig characteristics. Now I don't have any trouble at all telling them apart as I am used to their 'jizz', but if you were to ask me to describe the key difference for identification I would stuggle to put it into words.

Oaks have clusters to tan-coloured buds at the end of the twigs with lots of bud-scales, often arranged in a herringbone pattern. Beware, that some books and keys tell you that oaks are the only genus to have terminal clusters of buds, but wild cherry often does this also. You are supposed to be able to tell the 2 British species apart by counting the number of bud-scales but I have never tested this out to be able to tell if it works or not.

Alder buds are one of the most attractive. They have a unique puple colour with a floury bloom. The lateral buds are on short stalks which is unique amongst British species.

Alder are the most decorated of British deciduous trees in winter. The old cones are unmistakable. This picture shows some tightly-closed, long males catkins with a cluster of immature female cones in the background.

Fragrant orchids

Ok, I know I said before (see 'Orchid overdose' - July2007) that I might never blog about orchids again, but I did just say 'might'. I suppose I now have to admit that I've become an orchid fancier (almost). I've been surveying upland hay meadows in the North Pennines for the last 3 years and although orhcids are quite uncommon in hay meadows now, I have seen some of them often enough to start to get interested. I had a lot to learn about British orchids and I found Michael Foley and Sidney Clarke's book very useful. I didn't know the fragrant orchids at all when I started but have now seen all three types.

Up to a few years ago most people were happy to call them all 'fragrant orchid'. Frances Rose (who must be a leading candidate for being Britain's most outstanding field naturalist) divided them into three types a long time ago. His view has now been backed up by DNA analysis. They are likely to appear as separate species (or sub-species) in the next edition of Stace and it will be interesting to see what kind of patterns emerge in geohgraphical distribtution and habitat preferences of the three types, as more people start to record and map them. If you look at the distribution maps on the BSBI website http://www.bsbimaps.org.uk/atlas/main.php you will see how under-recorded the sub-species are currently compared to the species.

This is Gymnadenia conopsea borealis (or just G. borealis if you prefer), which I have found in eight different meadows. It seems to be easily the most common of the three around here. In the hay meadows it is normally now confined to unmown (and unfertilised) banks, often growing in quite acidic U4c vegetation with species like betony and bitter-vetch. The lower lip of the flower (labellum) is almost not lobed at all and is longer than wide. The two lateral sepals are not exactly horizontal, but point a bit downwards.

I've found this one, Gymnadenia conopsea conopsea three times, but only a very small number of individuals in each case. (Sorry about the rubbish photo!). It is supposed to prefer more calcareous conditions. The labellum is much more lobed than borealis with the 3 lobes being about equal in size. Overall the labellum is about as long as wide. The lateral sepals are wider than borealis but still point slightly downwards.

This one is (I think) Gymnadenia conopsea densiflora, which I've only found once. It is supposed to prefer damper grasslands than the other two. It is also lobed and the middle lobe is supposed to be smaller than the two lateral lobes - although that isn't very obvious on this specimen. Overall the labellum is wider than long. The lateral sepals are wide like conposea but this time they do point out exactly horizontally. I found quite a big population of this growing on the edge of a meadow right on the riverbank of the Tees near Cronkley Bridge. The three types are supposed to have a slightly different smell, but I haven't sniffed them enough to know if that works for me yet.

Sound easy doesn't it. Well it's not! I thought it was fairly easy until I found the densiflora population. Both conopsea and borealis were there also, but the most common Gymnadenia there appeared to be intermnediate between densiflora and conopsea. Presumably these are hybrids. The three types are probably quite closely related, so its not surprising that if they grow together they would hybridise. Even if they have fairly strict habitat preferences, it is often possible to get a mixture of quite different soil conditions within a very small space, so not that unlikley to get them together at least sometimes.

They are nice plants. Its good fun trying to figure out a new botanical puzzle. But the main reason I like them is because they always grow in nice habitats.

John