I was at Mount Caburn last weekend but as it was hot with no shade on the hill, was drawn by the cool shade of Vert Wood just up the road, near Laughton. Wellies happened to be in the car so I was able to leave the hard, central track for the wet rides deeper into the woods.
Thuidium tamariscinum was the dominant moss on the woodland floor and with Polytrichum formosum and Pseudoscleropodium purum made a patterned carpet worthy of a Wetherspoons. One soil mound had some Pleuridium with orange, oval capsules, which seemed to have the male shoots of Pleuridium subulatum which was new for the wood.
There was plenty of Sphagnum auriculatum, and Rhytidiadelphus squarrosus in the grassier areas. Peering closer at uneven, rutted mud there was Solenostoma gracillima and a little moss with round, red-brown capsules and lax-celled leaves. Tom had shown me Entosthodon obtusus here in its Sussex stronghold before and it was good to see quite a few shoots scattered across the mud. Of the six tetrads that it has been recorded in in East Sussex, four are in Vert Wood. Brad and Luska spotted it by a small stream in a gulley at Pippingford in 2018 and Malcomn Mc. Farlane found it at Eridge Park in 1947. there are no records from West Sussex.
There wasn’t much more variety along the wet ride and it soon joined a dry path. Going off at a tangent again I found a small pond with more Pleuridium, this time Pleuridium acuminatum which has been recorded in the wood before.
The main track is lined with a lovely old ditch topped by mounds of Dicranum scoparium and Polytrichum formosum both producing fresh sporophytes.
I was just heading back when Mark messaged to say that he had done a mini cross country and landed his paraglider in a field near Laughton and remembered that I had talked about going to a wood nearby and more to the point, had the car. I was able to get to our meeting point just in time to buy the last pastel de nata and a sourdough loaf in the lovely little post office-so a disorganised morning all turned out quite well!.
Sunday was another Caburn day and this time I fell back on the old favourite of a rootle around the ditches in the cow field/ car park before walking over Mount Caburn to Lewes and catching a train home. A few years ago I found a mystery Tortula on the river bank but it was a bit late in the season for Tortulas and the south-facing bank where it had been growing was sun baked. Instead I spent some time looking at a north-facing ditch bank, kept moist by spring growth of Spike-rush, Gipsywort and Hemlock Water-dropwort. There was hardly any moss growth but amongst sparse shoots of Pohlia melanodon and Dicranella varia there was the odd brown capsule emerging from large-celled leaves. This was Physcomitrium pyriforme, differing from the Entosthodon in its beaked lid on a pear-shaped capsule. It’s more common than E. obtusus in Sussex but still an unexpected find.
It was slightly early in the year for the full flowering of the steep south face of Caburn, in high summer when the Marjoram is in flower it will smell like pizza. While looking for the tiny flowers of Bastard Toadflax in the cucumber-scented sward at Oxteddle Bottom there was one plant of Hairy Rock-cress a characteristic plant of chalk downs but new to me!
Sussex Bryophytes 