Bletchingdon Bryophytes

For our third recording trip of the season, after two consecutive trips to nature reserves, we decided to focus on the wider countryside, plumping for the village of Bletchingdon. A picturesque village in northern Oxfordshire built around a large green, adjacent to a grand manor house in a Palladian style. The village is adajcent to the Oolitic cornbrash limestone bedrock, and as such we expected good hunting for bryophytes on the many limestone walls of the village. Indeed, although mainly intending to focus on SP5018, we spent some time after arriving inspecting a fine wall along the road from the village green to the church. The wall had the fruiting feather (pleurocarpous) moss Homalothecium sericeum above fine and extensive sheets of Porella platyphylla, a liverwort that you may recall from our last trip to Watlington Hill. The wall also yielded Syntrichia virescens, among others; David picked this out from amongst the more abundant, larger, Syntrichia montana. A later check under the microscope proved him right! This is a probably under-recorded species, only recognised as British in 1959. The 1998 Flora of Oxfordshire hedged its bets by labelling it "?rare".

Fine sheets of Porella platyphylla in the morning sun.

Homalothecium sericeum in fruit at Bletchingdon.

Hurrying on from the delights of this wall (we were in fact late to our official rendezvous point!), we then focused on the churchyard of St Giles for an hour or so. This included a range of graves of different stone, aspect, angle, and shadedness, resulting in a pretty good list. The highlight of the limestone headstones being some small patches of Tortella tortuosa. A notable near miss was an infertile Aloina species from the churchyard path; sadly these little acrocarps are unidentifable (at least without molecular techniques!) from infertile material, so this record remains at the genus level. Interestingly, Aloina ambigua was recorded from Bletchingdon stone pit in 1945. The full list from the churchyard was as follows:

Aloina sp.	Orthotrichum affine
Barbula convoluta var. convoluta	Orthotrichum anomalum
Barbula convoluta var. sardoa	Oxyrrhynchium hians
Barbula unguiculata	Phascum cuspidatum
Brachythecium rutabulum	Plagiomnium undulatum
Bryum argenteum	Pseudocrossidium hornschuchianum
Bryum capillare	Pseudoscleropodium purum
Ceratodon purpureus	Rhynchostegiella tenella
Dicranella varia	Rhynchostegium confertum
Didymodon fallax	Rhynchostegium murale
Didymodon insulanus	Rhytidiadelphus squarrosus
Didymodon sinuosus	Schistidium apocarpum s.l.
Grimmia pulvinata	Thamnobryum alopecurum
Homalothecium sericeum	Tortella tortuosa
Hypnum cupressiforme	Tortula muralis
Hypnum cupressiforme var. resupinatum	Zygodon viridissimus var. viridissimus
Kindbergia praelonga	Metzgeria furcata
	Porella platyphylla

The rest of the day was spent exploring SP5018, taking in a circular walk around the parkland of Bletchingdon manor, ultimately heading back into the village along the Kirtlington road. Overall we put a together a long list for the day, including Neckera complanata and more Porella together on a large ash stool, Oxyrrhynchium speciosum on the edge of a small stream in woodland, and Syntrichia papillosa on another large ash tree. On the way back to the village a stubble field was also worked over, although this yielded a fairly typical assemblage of Barbula unguiculata, Phascum cuspidatum, Oxyrrhynchium hians, and the tuberous Bryum, B. klinggraeffii. Both assemblages of fields in the calcareous parts of south-east Britain (see Preston et al., 2010 [complete the "captcha" image text to access the paper]).

Neckera complanata growing on a wall with H. sericeum at Bletchingon Park

Finally, arriving back into Bletchingdon, we spent some time grubbing around for urban ruderal species, adding Brachythecium albicans and Tortula modica from some unusually sandy soil behind kerbstones, followed by the classic wet tarmac species Didymodon nicholsonii, Ceratodon purpureus, Bryum dichotomum and Orthotrichum anomalum from a playground. A pre-Christmas pint soon followed! The full list from the wider 1km square was as follows:

Amblystegium serpens	Grimmia pulvinata	Rhynchostegium confertum
Barbula unguiculata	Homalothecium sericeum	Syntrichia laevipila
Brachythecium albicans	Hypnum cupressiforme	Syntrichia montana
Brachythecium rutabulum	Hypnum cupressiforme var. cupressiforme	Syntrichia papillosa
Bryum argenteum	Hypnum cupressiforme var. resupinatum	Syntrichia ruralis var. ruralis
Bryum capillare	Isothecium myosuroides	Thamnobryum alopecurum
Bryum dichotomum	Kindbergia praelonga	Tortula modica
Bryum klinggraeffii	Leskea polycarpa	Tortula muralis
Bryum moravicum	Neckera complanata	Tortula truncata
Ceratodon purpureus	Orthotrichum affine	Ulota bruchii
Cryphaea heteromalla	Orthotrichum anomalum	Zygodon conoideus
Didymodon insulanus	Orthotrichum diaphanum	Frullania dilatata
Didymodon nicholsonii	Orthotrichum lyellii	Lophocolea bidentata
Didymodon sinuosus	Oxyrrhynchium hians	Metzgeria furcata
Didymodon vinealis	Oxyrrhynchium speciosum	Porella platyphylla
Fissidens incurvus	Phascum cuspidatum	Radula complanata
Fissidens taxifolius	Platyhypnidium riparioides

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