Saturday 27 October 2012

Gelli Grin and Bryn Bedwog

Galium odoratum - photo: Wikipedia Commons
We were only three botanists meeting to explore this area where these two farms are located - on the Ordovician limestone of the Gelli-Grin Calcareous Ash Formation.There is very little trace of calcareous influence on the vegetation, and the best indicator we found was a single small clump of Galium odoratum, Sweet Woodruff, on exposed rock in the quarry at the first farm. There was Dog's Mercury, Mercuralis perenne,  Primrose, Primula vulgare, as well as Polypodium interjectum, Intermediate Polypody, which also suggest some base richness, but no out-and-out calcicoles.

Polly and Lucia with a very tall Cirsium palustre!
We drove on to the second farm stopping on the way to have lunch by a small artificial lake beside the road - in the company of three friendly pigs who snuffled along the side of Polly's car! See Polly's blog We found some nice plants there as well including only the second record for Glyceria maxima - and the second this year!  At Bryn Bedwog we saw traces of the limestone extraction but found no sign of any calcareous influence there either.

We had a good day out without any very outstanding records but they included a Hieracium yet to be identified and a nice suite of plants of wet acid grassland.

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