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