A couple of trips last week cheered me up when I found the infrastructure for getting around had been improved. On Tuesday I returned to Denton Hill near Bo Peep and found new stiles, notice boards and a short path leading to an isolated bit of access land. In 2018 I had to climb a fence and sidle across a sheep field to reach the area.
Getting from Barnham station to Walberton on Friday I expected to cycle along a busy B-road but found a separate, quiet bicycle track, part of the national cycle network. Posters protesting against the proposed Arundel bypass were pinned on trees, a bigger, less welcome development which will have a huge effect on this neighbourhood.
The spring hedgerows were dazzling in the fresh colours of early May. The person who planted the stretch on the edge of Barnham must have liked hot pink as there was a Judas Tree, a dark pink Horse Chestnut and ornamental Hawthorn, all in full bloom.
As usual, bryophytes didn’t make life easy and the most exciting find, at the end of the day, of a bubbly clump of Sphaerocarpos was too old to identify, its spores dispersed before the hot dry weather. I will have to come back when cooler, wet weather returns.
Before that, it was an enjoyable but unremarkable day. The first stop in Walberton, by a large pond, added Leptodictyum riparium from the pond banks and a clutch of little epiphytes from an Oak by the pond and a roadside Maple. Pulvigera lyellii and Plenogemma phyllantha were nice to see so close to the road on the Maple and Syntrichia papillosa on the Oak.
At the other end of the village an old red brick wall screening Walberton Hall was draped in Homalothecium sericeum. In the shade of the tall wall Scleropodium cespitans crept across damp tarmac.
This led to the church and a nice curve of shaded flint wall by the lych gate had Zygodon viridissimus sprouting from damp mortar. Also in the shade of an ancient Yew, Plagiomnium rostratum spread its round leaves flat against hard earth. Slightly unexpected was finding a few shoots of Mnium hornum along with Dicranella heteromalla on bare earth below a Holly tree.
There was loads more Homalothecium sericeum on gravestones in the sun and Didymodon insulanus on some very old shaded tombstones along with Cirriphyllum crassinervium. Amblystegium serpens grew on a leaning gravestone. In the damp shade behind the church Cirriphyllum crassinervium spread across the north gutter and Tortula marginata crept up the north wall.
The ski-jump roof of the church was bare of bryophytes.
A small wood edged the south of the churchyard and a dead tree leaning over the wall was topped with Zygodon conoideus and Cryphaea heteromalla. The woodland shaded a massive family tomb. The marble was too smooth for bryophytes but concrete around the base was a coated in a spongy mass of Lophocolea bidentata. Sitting on the only bench that hadn’t been freshly varnished that morning I could see a few rosettes of Hennediella macrophylla on bare, trampled earth.
I decided to try and get to Binstead Church. A short stretch of footpath through an arable field was a bit bumpy on a bike, then a golf course and a downhill stretch through woodland that wasn’t marked on my map. I had a quick scout around the wood, recording common epiphytes, then found two huge old Field Maples above Binstead Rife. Radula complanata and Pulvigera lyellii were part of the patchwork of mosses on these trees.
The damper parts of the wood were hard to get into with fresh nettles sprouting everywhere. Emerging from the wood the valley of Binstead Rife was overgrown and inpenetrable. I could just see the clear chalk stream under the bridge but there were no bryophytes visible and no temptation to search the area further. I was really surprised when I got home to see that Tom and Jackie did a thorough survey of the Rife in 2015 recording 18 species including Oxyrhynchium speciosum in a flush. Their visit was in mid May too so either the vegetation was much lower nine years ago-or the pair were more intrepid than me!
My route ended at a kissing gate where the footpath joined a lane, difficult with a bicycle! Instead I hopped over a low flint wall into the churchyard, only realising later that the church gate was locked and the church and grounds out of bounds while repairs were taking place. Luckily it was Friday afternoon and roofers had knocked off early.
Perched up on a hill above the Rife with views down to the sea and north to the Downs, the tiny church was a bit exposed for bryophytes but there was Porella platyphylla, one of my favourite leafy liverworts, sheltered under meadow grasses on the gutter on the east side of the church. Francis Rose recorded Grimmia pulvinata when he visited the churchyard which I didn’t see.
On the return journey I stopped in the corner of a field of oilseed rape, its yellow flowers fading. The field of young corn on the other side of the path was green with algae at its edge but the brassica field was dotted with bryophyte growth. Amongst Bryum dichotomum and Tortula acaulon there were little rosettes of Riccia sorocarpa. In the field it looked as if there might be two different species but the samples I collected all had the v-shaped groove and colourless margin of R. sorocarpa. Then there was the little patch of Sphaerocarpos, about 2cm in diameter. I searched for more in vain, given false hope by Bryum dichotomum, leaf axils packed with round bulbils which looked remarkably like the bubbles of Sphaerocarpos!
SU90S now has 46 species recorded from a start of 21. Most additions were from Walberton churchyard. I crossed three other tetrads adding a few new species to each but all were already well recorded. SU90T now has 189 species recorded.
Sussex Bryophytes 