Sunday 10 November 2019 NWT Foxley Wood

The aim of the day was to introduce people to the joys of 'mossing'! It was great to see so many people there, including families. Thank you very much to Julia and all of you who helped on the day, including Chris, who arranged the day.

Although the aim of the day was not recording, we managed to find six new species for the site as a whole.  Not altogether surprisingly, at least four of them came from the car park! One of these was Raspberry Bryum Bryum klinggraeffii, which was also new to the 10 km square. Also surprisingly another, an epiphyte, which was new, was the liverwort Dilated Scalewort Frullania dilatata. We also found some of the special bryophytes, which are known from the site and recorded more exactly where they were. These ranged from the large leafy liverwort Greater Featherwort Plagiochila asplenioides, found in a number of places on banks and in the hazel coppice woodland floor, as was the large moss aptly named Big Shaggy Moss Rhytidiadelphus triquetrus, to the tiny Minute Earth-moss, Ephemerum minutissimum, on one of the rides. We also managed to track down a site for Blunt-leaved Bog-moss Sphagnum palustre with Common Haircap Polytrichum commune, on a wet ride on the edge of an area of heathland. Our wanderings took us past some of the Wild Service trees and we also picked up a couple of sites for the tiny Fenugreek Stalkball fungus, which makes the dead wood on which it grows, smell of curry - hence the name!

Greater Featherwort

Foxley is a large rich, diverse site and we only really scratched the surface. Hopefully we intend to go back to do more recording in the future in order to cover some of the areas, habitats and monads that we were unable to do justice to on the day.

Mary