All That Glistens

As soon as I joined a wide st. Leonard’s street on a gloomy late December day, green moss shimmered along the base of a shaded sandstone wall. There was plenty of opaque Tortula muralis but some areas of moss had glass-green transluscent leaves glinting with water droplets. It was dressed ready for a festive party but stuck at base of a dank wall. Finding this moss, that hadn’t been recorded in St. Leonard’s for 35 years, was surprisingly easy!

Tortula freibergii is a rare moss of Western Europe that was first found in the UK in 1966 in the Hastings area, then found on the sandstone edging of a canal in Manchester in the 1980’s. [1] It was first found in St. Leonard’s in 1966 by R.A.Finch where it grows along damp sandstone walls in the town. The following year Francis Rose found it growing on vertical sandstone in Hastings Country Park. [2]

The colonies were all visited regularly throughout the 1970’s, then records drop off, maybe after the Manchester site was discovered and bryologists had a new focus. Fairlight Glen records pick up again in the 2010’s when Tom made a few visits to the large colony in the ghyll, finding more plants on the cliffs at Covehurst. I accompanied him on one trip, checking the crumbling cliffs above the beach and finding it on compacted soil here.

The Fairlight Glen plants were fruiting when we visited in June 2016

No one had recorded it on the urban walls of St. Leonard’s since 1988 so it was high time for a visit.

It was a few minutes walk from St. Leonard’s Warrior Square station, picking up one new record of Syntrichia montana for TQ80E along the way. St. John’s Church didn’t look promising when I checked ahead on Streetview but had a surprising amount of moss life packed into a tiny churchyard. There was a range of common mosses on tarmac, sandstone and trampled earth including a nice assemblage on a sandstone wall top, but no sign yet of anything unusual.

Just across the road, a rest home was bordered by a heavy, damp stone wall. The stones were covered in Tortula muralis which is quite variable in colour but tends to have an opaque look. Samples that I checked for Tortula marginata, which looks fairly similar, all had the rolled edges of T. muralis. Some of the stones at the bottom of the wall had a glittery appearance. Looking closer, the moss leaves were rounded, transluscent, with a nerve stopping short of the leaf tip. Tortulas can be difficult to distinguish in the field but this one was obviously different and fitted the description of Tortula freibergii perfectly. I coudn’t get a good close up on my old phone but the BBS website has a good photo which I found very helpful for getting my eye in.

There were a few more stones brightened with the moss as I made my way up the hill. I wonder if anyone has checked other sandstone walls in the town; there are plenty! Otherwise there was Homalothecium sericeum, Grimmia pulvinata and Syntrichia montana.

Further up the hill, the huge Victorian piles with views to the sea gave way to suburban housing. There were still stretches of sandstone walling but I didn’t find more Tortula freibergii till I turned onto Gillsman’s Hill. Just one roadside tree, a small Sycamore, attracted epiphytes and these were the predictable Syntrichia papillosa, S. laevipila, Zygodon viridissimus and a smudge of Frullania dilatata.

Narrow Gillsman’s Hill was a busy through road with little room to linger but a shaded stretch of wall as the lane descended towards a stream had a bit of Tortula freibergii, hanging on as Brambles encroach and threaten the habitat.

Just before the main stream, a roadside well was lined with Pellia endiviifola, autumn branches in frilled layers like a gnomic beard. More like 4-o-clock stubble was Gyroweisia tenuis. I just managed to find one flask-shaped gemma to confirm it. The steep, cut edge of a lawn near the spring supported a nice mix of Plagiomnium undulatum, Calliergonella cuspidata and Didymodon insulanus.

Pellia endiviifolia

The entrance to Pond’s Wood was at the base of the hill. It was a relief to get away from the traffic and the wind. The woods were deserted, maybe because of the deep mud on the paths. The narrow nature reserve which follows the winding Hollington Stream had the feel of a once special place that had suffered from urbanisation and lost its vitality. New building work was squeezing against the stream edges. Unfortunately we don’t have any past bryophyte records and don’t know what was once here.

An elegantly curved concrete sandbag bridge was covered in Tortula muralis, Conocephalum conicum and Thamnobryum alopecurum spread across the sandbags and concrete stream edge and Didymodon sinuosus grew on flat stone. The stream was fast flowing and any rocks were submerged after winter rains. The steep sides were hard to access and washed bare of bryophytes.

Epiphytes were also sparse, even on streamside trees, but there was one Ash base covered in Homalia trichomanoides.

Some dingy liverworts scraped from a very high, steep mound were just recognisable as Diplophyllum albicans and Lophocolea bidentata but they weren’t doing well. A tiny pimple of bare earth was just big enough for Fissidens exilis and Dicranella heteromalla to grow together.

The good news is that Tortula freibergii is still growing healthily in two tetrads in St. Leonards. TQ71V now has 55 bryophyte records from a start of 29 although Pond’s Wood was disappointing. TQ70Z is up to 37 records and needs a little more work. However it does have records for two rare mosses as Hennediella stanfordensis grows near the seafront in St. Leonard’s gardens, re-found by Brad in 2017.

I had failed to get here earlier in the month because of a train strike but now, with a new train timetable, it’s a fairly speedy journey from Brighton so I’ll come back in spring to look for freibergii capsules and check more woodland further north.

[1] M. O. Hill, C. D. Preston and A. J. E. Smith. Atlas of the Bryophytes of Britain and Ireland: Harley Books for the B.B.S.

[2] F. Rose, R. C. Stern, H. W. Matcham and B. J. Coppins. Atlas of Sussex Mosses Liverworts and Lichens: Booth Museum of natural History