Early Spring in Cornwall 2023

 In a similar vein to 2022, it seems that Winter dragged on forever. Just when the weather turned mild and Spring plants began to appear, we had a prolonged cold spell in early March with some snow on higher ground, putting the plants back yet again.

However, we have now had a week of Atlantic air flow bringing wind, rain and above average temperatures to the peninsular and the flowers are now responding. The following plants are some of the more interesting plants of the season I've found so far, though I have included some Spring favourites too.

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Springtime is the time for bulbs, from Daffodils to Snowdrops and a plethora of garden escapes like the one below. Summer Snowflake, so named because it was named in Sweden where these flower much later than in the UK. Whilst the flowers are attractive, you have to get underneath them to see the insides, so expect muddy knees when taking a photograph. I found these in flower at the end of February on a rural roadside verge.

Leucojum aestivum subsp pulchellum - Summer Snowflake

I'd never seen this type of plant before, though I quickly recognised it as a Geranium. Research and help from other botanists narrowed this down to be Rock Cranesbill, a garden escape growing wild.

Geranium macrorrhizum - Rock Cranesbill

Dandelion season is now upon us, when the fresh Spring grown leaves aid identification of this difficult group. A little known fact is that there are around 250 species of Dandelion in the UK alone. Nearly all of them produce clones and do not hybridise. It's called an apomictic species, with each group of plants  mutating over time to form a different species. Brambles and Hawkweeds are similar in being apomictic.

The Dandelion below keyed out to be Taraxacum prionum, however, the BSBI referee couldn't be absolutely certain due to the leaves not being mature enough. If I find time, I''ll go back and have another look.

If verified, the fern below would have been a first for me of Lanceolate Spleenwort, a rare fern that grows on Cornish walls and in coastal areas. It most likely is this species, but being a young plant, I cannot say for sure and nor can the experts! It had the right shaps and wasn't triangular in outline and the stipe was not black, so ruling out the similar Black Spleenwort.

Another plant to revisit at a later date when spores are present on the back of the pinnae perhaps.

Asplenium obovatum subsp lanceolatum - Lanceolate Spleenwort

This is one of the problems of botany in early Spring. Sometimes it's not possible to firmly say what a plant you've found is called. Still, I would rather look than stay indoors.

After searching out various Erica species last year, I realised there was one I had missed by referring to the amazinf Flora of Cornwall book that I own. It was Portuguese Heath, a naturalised garden escape that is infrequently found around the county. I had earmarked a site near Lanhydrock to go and see one, but I found the ones below first, saving me a visit. These were widespread around the cliffs at the back of Carlyon Bay near St. Austell and put on quite a show. I saw more by the side of the A391 climbing out of St Austell too. I'd not seen this species before, so they were nice finds for me.

Erica lusitanica - Portuguese Heath

By mid March, more flowers were coming out. On a short visit to Rock Dunes, I found carpets of flowering Sea Mouse-ear which are very recognisable by only having 4 petals. Confusion can arise as a (very) few may have 5 petals. The flowers are less than 10mm across and you can see grains of sand on the plant, it's so small.

 

Cerastium diffusum - Sea Mouse-ear

Another ephemeral plant that flowers for a short time in Spring then disappears is Common Whitlowgrass. These are very small and the flowers even smaller. Have a look below at the £1 coin I put in the photo for scale. However, they are a nice little plant and here they carpeted areas of compacted sand dune like snow. They are most commonly found as a street plant in pavement and wall cracks. Note that the leaves in the photos belong to another plant called Common Storksbill.

Erophila verna - Common Whitlowgrass

Below is another ephemeral species which will be a distant memory by the end of April, it's the Ivy-leaved Speedwell. The flowers are again very small and easy to miss among the carpet of pale green ivy shaped leaves. In places with more sunlight you get the blue pollen subspecies, hederifolia, and in shady places, subspecies lucorum, which has cream or white pollen is more commonly found.

Veronica hederifolia subspecies hederifolia - Ivy-leaved Speedwell

By mid March the Daffodils were in full flower. There are so many cultivated species of Narcissus that have been planted, dumped or self seeded in the wild that I didn't know how to recognise a truly Wild Daffodil, up until now. I applied myself to the books and also got some expert advice from what to look for. To make sure I got it right, I then went to a known site near Lanhydrock to check them out.

They really are delightful and far superior in my view to the garish creations of man that adorn road verges and gardens everywhere.

Narcissus pseudonarcissus ssp pseudonarcissus - Wild Daffodil 

To help you identify these, the photo below shows what to look for to separate these from the cultivars.

 

A couple of weeks had passed, so I tried my luck at naming a Dandelion again. It would be impossible without the BSB Dandelion Handbook and access to the referee (available only to BSBI members). Of course, you need lots more sharp macro photos than those below and measurements of various parts too, but it's fun working it out.

This striking Dandelion, verified by the referee, turned out to be:

Taraxacum britannicum - no common name

Below is a Butterbur spike by the roadside at Washaway Church. They look a bit like mini triffids and comprise of a flowering spike only. The leaves don't appear until later in the year. These flowers had almost gone over and the spikes were short as the verge had been mowed later than usual by the local council, damaging the emerging spikes. They only grow in very damp places, often in areas submerged in Winter that dry out in Spring. Here they grow in glorious road run off water that keeps the verge quite wet and muddy to walk on.

Petasites hybridus - Butterbur

I quite like Fumitories, although they can be challenging to sort to species and sub species levels. The most common here is Common Ramping Fumitory and it's just coming back into flower now in numbers. It's quite a large Fumitory with flowers around 12mm long, the top and side petals are black tipped and moderate sized sepals with ragged edges around the base area.

Fumaria muralis - Common Ramping Fumitory

My final plant highlighted for early Spring is the Sweet Violet. It's a lovely plant and comes in various colour forms, the usual being a deep purple. So it is always nice to find the variants and below is a white form. There are actually two white forms, one with tufts of hairs on the side petals like this one below and one without (var. imberbis).

 

Viola odorata var. dumetorum - Sweet Violet

 I hope you enjoyed the first blog of 2023 from me. Of course, I omitted lots of wildflowers coming out now, such as carpets of Lesser Celandines, Primroses and Greater Stichworts, all beginning to light up the road verges here in Cornwall. It's a similar story around the southern part of the UK so go out for a walk and see what you can find. Most of all, have fun looking and enjoy yourself.

Take care

Dave

@Botany2021 (Twitter)

New Species of Grasses, Sedges, Rushes etc found in Cornwall in 2022

 This is my final blog relating to my finds of new species (for me) in Cornwall during 2022. It includes the more interesting plants in this section though I have omitted lots of sedges, which to the untrained eye all look very similar.

On a field trip to Harbour Cove sand dunes, a new sub species of False Oat Grass was pointed out to me by the County Recorder, but this was different to the thousands of specimens of that grass that I usually see just about everywhere. This is a subsecies that grows bulbs or corms below ground. Unfortunately, you have to almost pull up the grass to determine this, but on the plus side it is a common grass so no harm is done by checking a few plants to find it. You can even buy this plant online for your garden, though most gardeners would weed out wild grasses like this.

This was found in numerous bronze and iron age burial mounds, but it is unclear whether they were used for a ritual purpose or for food.

False Oat-grass - Arrhenatherum elatius subsp bulbosum

On the same field trip I was also introduced to the most deadly rush I've ever seen. Just looking at it like in the photo below, it just looks like a stout rush  growing in sand dunes. However, the inflorescences are borne upon very stiff leaves which sit bolt upright tipped by a stiff, sharp spine. These stems are rigid and do not bend from above. If you bent over near to one, it could stab out an eyeball or penetrate your skin, perhaps up to an inch deep.

Click here to see its UK distribution map.

https://plantatlas.brc.ac.uk/plant/juncus-acutus 

Sharp Rush - Juncus acutus

After being suitably warned by the field trip leader, I walked on and saw a small Trifolium. As I bent over to look at it, I very nearly came into contact with one of those spines to my face, so I'm obviously a bit of a slow learner! In the photo below you can see the sharp tip of these stems. Be careful around this impressive but dangerous plant.

On a May field trip to The Lizard we saw many amazing wildflowers and a mini fern called Pillwort (see my last blog). However, another miniature plant from this field trip was this Dwarf Rush below, a very rare plant indeed. It's related to the Sharp Rush above and in the same genus, but couldn't be more different. Only a couple of inches tall and so easily missed as one walks by.

If you click here, it will show you the UK distribution for it. I'm quite lucky being in Cornwall to have it grow here in the wild.

https://plantatlas.brc.ac.uk/plant/juncus-capitatus 

Dwarf Rush - Juncus capitatus

Below is a small sedge called the Flea Sedge as it supposedly looks like fleas gathered on a stem. I'd never come across it in Kent, but in Cornwall it is common on the acidic moors, bogs and heaths. When I've photographed other plants, I've noticed small Flea Sedges in the flora around the target plant. This little plant is easy to recognise too. It's a shame they don't have jumping seeds! It is quite common in the West and North of England, but absent from Kent entirely.

Flea Sedge - Carex pulicaris

Another Carex I frequently found here was the Star Sedge. Again, I'd never seen one before and when I first came across it, I thought it was False Fox Sedge, which is similar but the florets are more compact in the inflorescence. I've seen Star Sedge with a single "star" of seeds around the stem too, not all have multiple groups of "stars" like the one shown below. This one likes damp or wet acidic ground.

Star Sedge - Carex echinata

Below is an Umbrella Plant, one of several species of Cyperus that have escaped from gardens into the wild. I've found them in a few places, though none were anywhere near a garden! One location was an arable field edge not even near a road, another was in a disused quarry and one on the edge of a nature reserve. It gets about, I suspect birds might spread it. Although it is an attractive plant, it tends to form large clumps crowding out other species, so you wouldn't want it suddenly appearing on a sensitive site.

Pale Sedge - Cyperus eragrostis

An odd type of sedge I found was White-Beak Sedge which is sufficiently different to have its own family and not be included in Carex. I had heard of it but never seen it until 2022. I was on Retire Common near Bodmin admiring Heath Spotted Orchids and other flora when I came across an area that looked like it had snowflakes scattered about it. It was of course, the white coloured seedheads of this species which had formed a large colony in the bog area. A lovely plant to find. This species has a similar distribution to Fleaa Sedge, though is more common in western areas.

White Beak Sedge - Rhynchospora alba

"Snow" on the ground in June.

 

One of the more interesting grasses I found was Dune Fescue. It's not very common here and of course, I'd never seen it before. I found it in dunes on both sides of the River Camel, at Rock and Harbour Cove, growing with Sand Sedge and Marram Grass. It has orange-brown, almost rust coloured spikelets on a rhizome. So you often see these growing in a line as plants arise from the rhizome at regular intervals..

Dune Fescue - Vulpia fasciculata

This sedge below was shown to me on a field trip too. I was familar with Remote Sedge which has a long bract above a small, compact inflorescence, but this coastal species had an exceptionally long bract and much larger inflorescents than Remote Sedge. As such, it's an easy one to remember and identify for the future too.

Long-bracted Sedge - Carex extensa

My final find that I want to highlight was a rare sedge called Flat Sedge - because it's flat. Or at least it looks like it is in cross section. My first impression was that someone had tried to press it using a heavy book, but it just grows that way.

It only grows a few inches high in dune turf and is only found in Cornwall on MOD land at Penhale as far as I know. It's more common in East Anglia and the north of England.

Flat Sedge - Blymus compressus

So ends my new species found list for 2022. I have omitted a few, mostly where photos were disappointing, but there are still so many to find. The book, Flora of Cornwall published in 2020 has a huge species list and many of those are native plants too. As such, I should be kept busy for many years to come I hope. If you want to record or just see these plants, I would highly recommend buying a copy if you can find one. Here's a link to it.

https://www.summerfieldbooks.com/product/a-flora-of-cornwall/

 Many counties publish their own flora, so do some research and see what your own local area has to offer. Spring isn't far off now so there is much exploring to look forward to.

Take care

Dave

@Botany2021

New Ferns and Allies Found in Cornwall in 2022

 I wasn't going to write a blog on ferns, just confining the subject to flowering plants, but then I thought that botany applies to all vascular plants and some of you will be interested in what Cornwall has to offer. There's still lots of ferns here that I haven't yet seen or taken good photos of and some of the following are very common, but not so in north Kent where it's mostly dry and alkaline. As such, many were new to me. So here is a summary of the best new finds from 2022 relating to ferns or horsetails that I found in Cornwall.

The Rustyback Fern was the first fern I found on my very first trip out last February. It was growing on a garden centre wall in Sladesbridge and was a new monad record too. I later found it's uncommon the further west one goes into Cornwall as it doesn't like soils that are too acidic. I guess the lime in the wall mortar though was to its liking. It gets its name from the dense carpets of rust coloured spores that virtually cover all of the underside of the fronds, see 2nd photo below.

Asplenium ceterach

 

 On the same trip I saw some very impressive "shuttlecock" type ferns that grew large impressive fronds out of a single rootstock. I've not been too good on these ferns before, but I decided to study them and work them out. Below is a Golden-scaled Male Fern. It was quite spectacular and they were quite common in the woodland. The stem has rich golden scales that go from the base to the tip and there are black spots where the pinnules join the stem. Whilst related to the more common Male Fern, it is far more attractive.

Dryopteris affinis

Another common fern here is the Soft Shield Fern. Not once did I find this in Kent, though I did find the Hard Shield Fern once. The Soft Shield Fern is delightful; it is delicate and "soft" in outline, and though again it arises in a shuttlecock form it is much less tall and imposing as the Golden Scaled Male Fern above. The easy way to identify these is to look at the little thumb like feature at the base of the pinnules. It sticks out forward more or less parallel to the stem. This feature can be seen at standing height and I can identify it now by simply walking by and noticing those little "thumbs"..

Polystichum setiferum

An attractive small fern that is always found within the salt spray zone here is the Sea Spleenwort. Its attraction is having fleshy bright green fronds. It's small and compact and tucks itself into cliff crevices close to the sea but above the storm high tide mark. The leaves are fleshy being adapted to growing in a high salt environment. This species isn't present in Kent, likely due to there being a lack of habitat for it. Kent is mostly shingle, mud estuary or chalk cliffs fronted by large sea walls. However, here in Cornwall, it finds its niche in the ever eroding natural cliffs found on both coastlines.

Asplenium marinum

I would find Polypody Ferns in Kent but at that time could not identify them for sure. They were unusual to find and a microscope would be needed to firmly identify them to count rings on the mechanism that holds the spores. However, in Cornwall, Polypodies are literally found everywhere. As such, I bought a cheap microscope from a local supermarket and set to work to identify them for sure. The most numerous are Common Polypody and the natural hybrid between that and Southern Polypody called Intermediate Polypody. After checking lots of plants, it's now apparent that a visual check nearly always matches what the microscopic examination would tell me. The fronds below were very large and on checking them microscopically, I confirmed them as that natural hybrid.

Polypodium interjectum

The most impressive fern in the UK in my opinion is the Royal Fern. It can grow to six feet or more and have a similar diameter. I had seen this plant in Kent once before but never "in flower". The spike containing the orange coloured spores rise another two feet above the fern as shown below in an impressive display. For unknown reasons I didn't get my phone out and take a wider angle photo! I'll rectify that next summer. Here it grows on wet heaths and bogs as it grows mostly in permanently damp or wet ground.

Osmundia regalis

After finding the tallest, most impressive fern, I was shown some of the smallest in the UK. On a field trip with the Cornwall Botany Group to The Lizard we were shown the very rare Pillwort. The fern itself comprised of tiny curly strands poking up. These start off green and turn through yellow to rust coloured. As they mature, the spores form in a small sphere or pill shaped sphere, from whence it gets its common name. It was found on heath land near Kynance Cove in dried up puddles and tractor ruts. It's certainly a strange looking plant.

Pilularia globulifera 

The Lizard field trip produced for us another amazing tiny fern (strictly speaking, it's a Lycophyte), the Land Quillwort. Normally one would only see the slender leaves above ground, which look a lot like a young fleshy grass, so would be very easy to miss. Fortunately, this one was kicked up by livestock allowing us to see the plant as a whole. The local experts know that you can replant it  without harming the plant, so this was done before we left. This species is only found in the Channel Islands and on The Lizard in Cornwall.

Isoetes histrix

 

 My last find was again from a field trip and another plant that I would never have found on my own for two reasons. The first is that it was so tiny it blended into the flora around it, much of which was stunted Creeping Willow (Salix repens), so it was almost invisible and took a lot of searching for, even though our guide knew it was there - somewhere! The second reason is that this plant is only found in Cornwall on dunes on an active MOD base, thus there is no access unless previously authorised, as in this case. It's got to be the most attractive Horsetail (in my opinion) given the colours and its delicate nature. In the photo below I placed my hand lens to give you some scale.

Equisetum variegatum

 

That wraps up 2022 for ferns and their allies. I'm glad I have so many more to find though, such as filmy ferns, hybrid Polypodies, Clubmosses and much more. If starting out with ferns there's two books I would recommend to help you get started. Be aware that the best way forward is to take the book into the field and sit down next to a fern and go through the identification step by step. After seeing a few, you get the hang of it, so it's worth persevering.

This book may be out of print, though the Cornwall county Recorder may have a few copies left - see http://www.botanicalcornwall.co.uk/

 

 

 

The Fern Guide is still in print and gives more details to identify UK ferns.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My next blog will cover a few species of interesting grasses, sedges and rushes that I found in Cornwall in 2022. 

Take care

Dave