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BBS > Activities >
Meetings and Workshops > Local Meetings > South East Group >
Previous meetings 2007 |
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Local Meetings of the BBS South East Group 2007 |
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See also this link Malcolm Watling mwatling@supanet.com Seaton Lakes (v.-c. 15), 3 February 2007 Three former gravel pits beside the Little Stour River, east of Canterbury , are now used for private fishing. Gravel extraction finished in 1992 and since then earth moving and landscaping has left a substrate of mainly neutral to calcareous nature which in places has a conspicuous bryoflora.The land habitats are grass banks, meadows, scrub and clumps of young trees. Time prevented a complete search so we looked at areas most obviously well furnished with bryophytes. These were a car park and adjacent colonising bare soil, a gently sloping trackway with a gravel substrate and some rough grassland adjoining a young willow wood. We also looked at a weir on the river. This seemingly unpromising part of East Kent has been rather neglected bryologically, even by those of us who live here. Hence a quarter of species seen were new 10km square records (marked^), at least according to Trudy Side’s 1970 atlas.The car park is in a corner of some open ground which, having held the machinery of the gravel extraction works, had been levelled and left bare. Apart from fresh tyre-churned muddy tracks, the whole area was well colonised by mosses, mostly Brachythecium rutabulum, Kindbergia praelonga, Calliergonella cuspidata and Didymodon fallax . One corner shaded by a row of willows had an impressive sward of Drepanocladus aduncus ^, which is locally common on some of the damper ground in this valley, but here giving a notable display. Cratoneuron filicinum was patchily abundant here, as was Aloina aloides^ , showing up as brown carpets of sporophytes. An old telegraph pole on the ground, used as a boundary marker, yielded small amounts of Campylopus introflexus^ and Dicranoweisia cirrata^ . Also present here was Trichostomum crispulum^ , usually found mainly on the downs in Kent .The gravel trackway didn’t look like one; the upper part was rough grass with a selection of the common mosses, but as it levelled out to join the flat area, it became a thick turf of co-dominant Calliergonella cuspidata and Cratoneuron filicinum , with Oxyrrhynchium hians and Amblystegium serpens. Brachythecium mildeanum^ was found here, but quantities are unknown since it was overlooked until microscopic examination of collected samples! Its presence is a good reason for attempting to preserve these habitats.The wood was devoid of epiphytes except for one patch of Frullania dilatata and a few scraps of Orthotrichum diaphanum , but had some Hypnum cupressiforme and Hypnum resupinatum on tree bases. Despite the wetness of the site, even the soil here was dry, being made of the remains of a very soft, fine silt brought up by the dredging. The only mosses on the ground were just a few patches of Barbula convoluta perched round the edges of some rather fragile rabbit burrows. The grassland was not prolific, but did add to our list Pseudo 14 Field Bryology number 92 scleropodium purum, Dicranella varia , and Pottia davalliana. Molehills under a small clump of willows gave us Fissidens incurvus and Physcomitrium pyriforme^ .The weir had Tortula muralis and Bryum dichotomum on the brickwork and banks, with Platyhypnidium riparioides^, Leptodictyum riparium and Brachythecium rivulare^ in the running water. The commonest moss in the water, in running and still parts, was Cratoneuron filicinum . Other species found in various places were Barbula unguiculata, Bryum caespiticium, B. capillare and, on exposed gravel of a ditch bank, immature Pohlia sp.We are most grateful to Dr. Norman McCanch, the site’s wildlife consultant, for his assistance in arranging this meeting and showing us around. |
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Copyright © British Bryological Society
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