Patens in the Landscape

Another mild autumn day with a gentle breeze meant another chance to get out onto Pevensey Levels.

Apart from pausing while some escaped lambs ambled off the road I headed straight to New Bridge. The brick bridge was neither old nor new and covered in grey lichen with a small fan of Homalothecium sericeum the only moss. Underwhelmed by the bridge area I followed a footpath between two ditches just finding Pohlia melanodon and Tortula acaulon on muddy banks and Orthotrichum diaphanum and Myriocoleopsis minutissima on Hawthorn.

There was some Bryum argenteum on rough ground by a farm gate and I collected some mud from the dyke bank looking out onto much Floating Pennywort removal. Ditches under tree cover were hiding loads more Pennywort which will be trickier to remove. Dicranella varia and Bryum ruderale were in vertical mud banks. It was a lovely spot and I listened to some unfamiliar bird song- it reminded me of Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep, but I couldn’t see the bird!

Rooting around the bridge area there was Syntrichia montana on a brick column and a speck of Dicranoweissia cirrata on a fence. Schistidium crassipilum and grimmia pulvinata on concrete were just into TQ61F and new for that relatively well recorded tetrad.

Two dozy pigs lay against a fence and as I was unlocking my bike at New Bridge found myself face to face with a sleepy lizard with long fingers and toes.

Cycling back along Rickney Lane I realised that the Physcomitrella patens site, found on my last visit, was at the edge of TQ60D and it might be possible to do a tetrad-recording hack and search for it a few metres away in TQ60I. It didn’t take long to spot it in a low, muddy field boundary at right angles to the original site. It wasn’t such an impressive patch but growing in similar poached mud beneath a tangle of Water-pepper.

Physcomitrella patens habitat

And close up

Alongside there was Leptodictyum riparium on soggy, half buried branches and Amblystegium serpens on mud and tree bases. A tiny area of Syntrichia papillosa was drowning in gemmae which could grow into a large patch in a few years time. Backtracking along the flint wall didn’t produce any Zygodon stirtoni but it might be worth looking again at the mossy stretch at Bridge Farm in Rickney. With the addition of Metzgeria furcata from a Field Maple on Rickney Road TQ60I has reached 41 taxa.

TQ60J has 31 records now and will be a struggle to get to 40 taxa.