Botanical Finds in Cornwall - September 2022 - Part 1

 

 September is when the heath plants flower and there were a few I'd yet to see, such as Dorset Heath, which is present on the mid Cornwall moors. So at the beginning of Spetember I went off to find them. One site is near Carland Cross on the A30 which is currently subject to a massive roadworks project to dual the existing A30. Thankfuly, I avoided any major delays and parked  down a lane off the A30. After walking a while, I noticed lots of Orpine in flower along the rural lane. Clearly not planted, and native in Cornwall, they were quite colourful and I could see why people plant them in their gardens.

Hylotelephium telephium subsp fabaria

How the leaf attaches to the stem and its shape is key to subspecies determination. The leaf below shows a cuneate base (tapering) to the stem and is stalkless. Subspecies telephium is a non native garden escape and would have strongly truncate leaves (horizontal to the stalk) and almost stalkless.

That was a good start and they are uncommon in the wild, they had been recorded here before, but not for many years.

Once on the reserve I photographed what I thought was Dorset Heath as the leaves were in whorls of 4. However, it didn't match the online (or book) photos of it, with the flowers being closer to Cross-leaved Heath. Given its height, branching habit and glandular hairiness, it was quite obviously a hybrid plant.

Erica ciliaris x Erica tetralix E. x watsonii

 I didn't have time to look further as rain had finally arrived, and it was teeming down giving me a good soaking. As my camera and lenses aren't waterproof I gave up and headed home. A week or so later, I had another go at finding Dorset Heath and headed to a nature reserve where they were known, but different to the previous location. Dorset Heath was in abundance here, though mostly in seed, but they clearly looked quite different to the previous plant above.

Note how the flowers are mostly one sided up the stem in a raceme and not clumped together at the top. The whorls of glandular hairy leaves and branches are quite apparent and the leaves are in whorls of three.

Dorset Heath is quite an attractive rare plant.

Erica ciliaris

  I found another hybrid there too, in fact I found several.

 Erica ciliaris x Erica tetralix E. x watsonii

Heather was also in flower.

Calluna vulgaris

Here is the other parent to the hybrid, E. watsonii above, the Cross Leaved Heath.

Erica tetralix

Sneezewort is not very common and the flowers look rather like oversized Yarrow flowers to which it is related. It's found in damp acidic areas and was doing well around several Gorse bushes on the edge of a mire. The purple flower beneath it is a Water Mint (Mentha aquatica).

Achillea ptarmica

Along a remote farm track I found stands of Pale Galingale, a fequent garden escape plant that pops up every now and then. Also called an Umbrella Plant given the shape of its leaves.

Cyperus eragrostis

Purple Loosestrife is a late Summer flowering plant of wet plaes and it usually looks quite ragged and "rough looking". This one bucked the usual trend for this species and looked very attractive.

Lythrum salicaria

Bog Myrtle flowers in the Spring, it is a woody small shrub and every part of it smells beautiful and still did in September. I was drawn to what looked like catkins, but on closer examination they turned out to be its fruits.

Myrica gale

There were some massive Royal Ferns around like the one below. It was about 5-6 feet tall, it's a shame I couldn't rig up a time delay photo to include me in it to show scale, it was really impressive. Reasonably common on the mid Cornwall moors, but rare the further East one goes. In Victorian times these were almost collected to extinction.

Osmunda regalis

Part 2 follows soon to round off the month, I hope you enjoyed it.

Regards

Dave