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Saturday, October 12, 2013

Preparing for next year and walking

Steph and I visited a farm in the Nedd Valley where we will be holding a botanical recording meeting next year in association with the National Trust who own it. We were more focussed on searching out habitats to visit than recording botany - and we did find a most amazing variation of habitat types from wet pasture to classic unspoilt hay meadows and limestone pavement. 

There were some varied fungi on display.
 This is I think a Geoglossum or Trichoglossum
 Some waxcaps
 and, as Steph observed ironically, "maybe a coprophilous fungus"
This at first glance seemed like a nice soft cushion to sit on and observe the Nedd gorge below, which would not have been a safe thing to try as it is a mat of a brittle lichen.
And we had our lunch sitting on these massive limestone pavement boulders in woodland on a higher part of the farm.
We saw Small-leaved lime growing natively sprouting from the rocks of the gorge and also some Wych Elm (not pictured) with very large leaves.
The Lime trunks corresponding to the photograph above.

Then yesterday Martin Wibberly and I reprised our "History and Flora of the Digedi Valley" walk for the Hay Walking Festival. This time the weather looked good on the forecast as well as when we set out only to deteriorate to about the level we had last year from a very wet start. This led to some philosophising on weather and walking - it somehow seemed more disappointing to be sheltering just where we did last year for lunch having set out hoping to do so on the common under Hay Bluff. But it went well with Martin, as usual, full of fascinating anecdotes as well as hard facts about the history of this area and the fate of the farms. I managed as before to find just enough visible botany go get by in a difficult month !


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