New and interesting lower plant records from West Sussex
Source: Matcham, Howard. “New and interesting lower plant records from West Sussex.” Sussex Botanical Recording Society Newsletter, no. 72 (May 2011). http://sussexflora.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Newsletter_May_2011.pdf.
It is World War II. High in the sky above Tangmere the crew of a German bomber prepares to bomb Tangmere airfield below. Bombe entfernt! Missed!!
Fast forward sixty years and the crater is located a cricket pitch length north of the A27 to the west of Tangmere service station. The resulting explosion all those years ago had displaced gravel and chalk and today a few yards of the crater perimeter support a small colony of Ophrys apifera (Bee Orchid) and Hygrocybe conica (Blackening Waxcap). Then, the area would have been an arable field, possibly growing sugar beet as ‘dig for victory’ had been instigated in Britain as soon as the war started. Now, it is regularly mown grass where horses canter the day away. It has been such for at least the thirty years I have lived at Strettington, just a stone’s throw away. January 2010 was mean. Snow lay in the area for much of the month and the water table was exceptionally high and the crater filled with water to a depth of several feet. April saw a gradual drop in the water table and by the third week of the month the crater was dry. During the last few days of April I noticed an extensive area of wine red colouring the moribund grass and investigation proved this to be a filamentous alga. I am not a phycologist but I know somebody who is! My weekly visits to the Natural History Museum in London meant that I was able to show the collection to Professor David John; in fact, I left it on his desk. Imagine my surprise when a few days later an e-mail informed me that I had discovered the first record from England of Sphaeroplea soleirolii previously known only from pools (probably temporary) lying between sandhills on the coast of Caernarvonshire in mid-Wales. The record is in time to appear in the 2nd edition of The Freshwater Algal Flora of the British Isles, (includes terrestrial species), which is due for publication this year.
I have been exceptionally busy on the bryophyte front compiling a database of the post 1960 hectad and tetrad moss and liverwort records of Sussex, which amounted to approximately 7,150 records. This does not, of course, include all individual bryophyte records recorded from these squares. On completing the task in early October a welcome break was provided by an invitation to join Graeme Lyons and Bruce and Jacqui Middleton recording the lower plants at the recently designated Graffham Common Local Nature Reserve. At the end of the day as we approached the pond, Bruce showed me a thalloid liverwort growing extensively on exposed mud; this exclusively mud-loving species is Riccia huebeneriana (Violet Crystalwort) in only its second site for the vice-county. It has not been seen at the former site, Hawkins Pond, for several decades.
During the middle of October I joined Rod Stern and Graham Roberts at the River Ems to try and re-locate the aquatic liverwort Ricciocarpus natens (Fringed Heartwort) and in this we were successful. It was first found by the three of us and the late Francis Rose in July 1992 and this site remains the only vice-county location, although it could possibly still be extant at Knepp Castle where it was found during the last century.
An added bonus was collecting a liberal helping of dung from a crusty cowpat in the meadow approaching the canal, which had a profuse covering of the very common orange cowpat discomycete Coprobia granulata, and after three weeks moist chamber cultivation the C. granulata had disappeared and perithecia of Schizothecium aloides appeared. This is the first West Sussex record of a very local species with only nineteen previous records from the British Isles (BMS – Fungal Records Database of Britain and Ireland) although the distribution map from the NBN Gateway show even fewer records.
In May Rod and I had visited a local SNCI at West Wittering which has a good colony of Green-veined Orchid (Orchis morio) when I noticed what I took to be a rust fungus on the leaves of Ranunculus repens (Creeping Buttercup). However, on looking at it microscopically it appeared to be a chytrid fungus, the most primitive of fungi; the name is derived from the Greek word chytridion which refers to ‘little pot’ and aptly describes the structure that contains the spores. I could not identify it to a species and sent it to Kew which replied: “The fungus on the Ranunculus repens leaves seems to be a Synchytrium, rather young but quite typical of the genus in the dense, wart-like galls. It should perhaps be assigned to S. aureum s. lat., which has been recorded from many hosts, and is probably a species complex. It is the only one recorded from this group of Ranunculus (S. anomalum very occasionally on R. ficaria). However, there are very few records of it, and evidently only from R. acris.” This species was a new record for southern England with the nearest previous record from South Wales.
I am particularly interested in fungi growing on faecal material (fimicolous or coprophilous) and, as I have remarked previously, walking a succession of my canine friends has led me to discover interesting records. This year has not been an exception. A large horse midden, artificially created of course, and heaped to a height of approximately eight feet, is the ideal place for an intelligent country dog to stand and take in the view. Rabbits live dangerously if they have a long way to run to safety and more than one has ended up on Barney’s dinner plate! On this particular day, a fungus growing on the dung caught my eye as I was familiar with it from the New Forest, which is its European stronghold. Poronia punctata (Nail Fungus) is a Near Threatened Red Data List species and is normally confined to pony dung. This would appear to be the first record from a midden [accessed in RBGK as -K(M)166679] and none of the animals on the farm are New Forest or Exmoor ponies, so quite a surprise and the first ever record for West Sussex. The midden also had hundreds of the minute ascomycete Saccobolus versicolor with apothecia rarely more than 1mm in diameter. At maturity the ascus protrude above the surface of the disc and the eight spores to each ascus leave firmly stuck together when projected from it. I have moist chamber dung and myxomycete cultivations all through the house which, apart from annoying my wife, produce interesting results, (and sometimes interesting aromas). One of these cultures of horse dung from the midden had the ascomycetes Lasiobolus ciliatus [accessed in RBGK as -K(M) 165492] and Ascobolus albidus both with few records from the county. Deer pellets collected from the Graffham Common visit produced the rare and predominantly fimicolous saprophyte Podospora curvicolla, a second record for the vice-county.
I have mentioned the footpath Town Lane in previous reports; it is part of Stane Street which extends from Strettington to Boxgrove and has proved to be a hotspot of interesting fungus records; this year was not an exception and during a walk in October I spent part of a morning checking dead bramble stems for fungi. On spotting a familiar species I took it home for microscopic examination and was able to confirm the second British record for the ascomycete Pseudotrichia viburnicola [accessed in RBGK as -K(M)167509]: you may remember last year I wrote how my late dog Lucy helped me to find the first British record. Considering this second record is only approximately 800m from the first, it is reasonable to assume that it has either been overlooked by British mycologists or it is a genuinely rare species. It has very recently (2010) been discovered in Germany and is known from eight sites in France. Town Lane also had the first colony I have seen of the small brown agaric Tubaria dispersa (Hawthorn Twiglet) which is confined to buried mummified haws of Hawthorn.
(This article was first published in Adastra journal by the Sussex Biodiversity Record Centre).