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Read in: EnglishCymraeg
Lizzie Wilberforce
Spring is an exciting time to be on our nature reserves.
This is the season when the meadows really burst into life, with lush growth and seasonal flowers.
Cae Blaen-dyffryn is our south Wales nature reserve and can be found close to the town of Lampeter, in Carmarthenshire. It’s best known for its population of Greater and Lesser Butterfly Orchids (Platanthera chlorantha & P. bifolia) which flower in the high summer.
However, a visit in spring is always rewarding. Luxuriant fresh growth in the grassland is fed by a warm sun and abundant rain. Cuckoos call from distant hills. Within the reserve, Meadow Pipits drop from the sky above you with their cascading song, and Stonechats call assertively from the scrub.
You can also find the earliest-flowering plant species breaking through in Cae Blaen-dyffryn in May and June. If you look carefully, you can also find signs of other beauties still in store, like the feathery leaves of Whorled Caraway Carum verticillatum (Carmarthenshire’s ‘County Flower’) poking through.
In May, the most abundant include pink Lousewort (pictured) Pedicularis sylvatica, purple Bugle Ajuga reptans, and yellow Tormentil Potentilla erecta, so the reserve is already a rainbow of colour.
Scattered bushes of Broom (pictured) Cytisus scoparius and Gorse Ulex europaeus are also in their fullest seasonal yellow coat of flowers. As soon as the sun hits them, they are suddenly alive with pollinators.
The speckled leaves of Dactylorhiza Orchids(pictured) can also be found peeking out between the abundant patches of Knapweed Centaurea nigra and Cat’s-ear Hypochaeris radicata.
Our North Wales nature reserve, sitting on a hillside above Clynnog-Fawr on the Llyn peninsula, is equally known for its population of Greater Butterfly Orchids which number in their thousands at the site.
The meadows under the mountain pass face north east, making them a morning spot to visit if you wish to enjoy them in the sunshine at this time of year. They are as equally beautiful in the North Wales rain, however.
The cloddiau (earth and stone bank walls) between the fields are an equal show to the meadows, with their hedgerow tops of Rowan, Damson, Hawthorn and Blackthorn. If you look below the trees the Common Dog Violets Viola riviniana hide amongst the tree roots and the boulders.
The orchids are already visible in the meadow and the Yellow Rattle Rhinanthus minor is just starting to flower.
A few Celandines (pictured) Ficaria verna are just holding on but the yellow flowers and white clocks of the Dandelions Taraxacum spp contrast beautifully with the blue of the Bluebells Hyacinthus non-scripta, which are equally set off by the feathery leaves of Pignut Conopodium majus.
Spring Sedge Carex caryophyllea abounds at the site but if you look between it and the more prominent species very carefully you will see the leaves and tiny starry green flowers of the Intermediate Lady’s-mantle (pictured) Alchemilla xanthochlora and Smooth Lady’s-mantle Alchemilla glabra. If you visit in the morning on a dew laden spring day, you will catch these plants living up to their other name of ‘Dew Cup’.
There is something wonderful about the sense of promise yielded by flower-rich grasslands at this time of year. And a feeling you can’t wait to come back to see what you might find next.
Caeau Tan y Bwlch is managed on behalf of Plantlife by North Wales Wildlife Trust.
For more details on visiting our Welsh reserves in spring and throughout the year, visit our reserves page here Welsh Nature Reserves – Plantlife
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Robbie Blackhall-Miles
What do the peaks of the Eryri mountains and our garden lawns have in common?
Robbie Blackhall-Miles, Plantlife’s Vascular Plant expert, explains how grazing works to protect our most species-rich habitats.
In Britain, agriculture is a dominant force in the plant communities we have, and our farm livestock is key in replicating the impacts of the constant movement of the wild herds of grazing animals that once roamed our countryside. Many, if not all, of our plant communities rely on some form of grazing or vegetation removal to ensure that they survive.
An understanding of conservation grazing, hay cutting and scrub management can help our most species rich habitats thrive.
Overgrazing is one of the key issues for Arctic Alpine species for example, but of course it is not necessarily the only problem. For some, like plants that live in Calcareous grassland, under grazing may as equally be an issue. Or maybe it’s the fact that the plant community isn’t being grazed by the right type of animal? Or is it that it isn’t being grazed at the right time of year? Or that when its grazed there isn’t enough of the animals that need to be grazing it? Or maybe too many? So many questions!
It’s a question I often ask myself, and one that came up when we developed the Tlysau Mynydd Eryri Eryri’s Mountain Jewels project that forms part of Natur am Byth!. With 10 very different plant species and 2 invertebrate species, we must think about multiple different ways to ensure these are all looked after.
For our tall herb species such as Alpine Saw Wort Saussurea alpina and the Eryri Hawkweed Hieracium snowdoniense we almost certainly need to consider grazing in the Autumn with cattle and maybe a short pulse of grazing in early May.
For the Thyme rich calcareous grassland, with its complement of rare eyebrights (like Welsh Eyebright Euphrasia cambrica), that is so important for the Eryri Rainbow beetle Chrysolina cerealis we probably need sheep right up until late April and then not again until a period in late August or September.
For Mountain Avens Dryas octopetala (pictured) we probably don’t want any grazers near it until the winter. If trees or brambles start to dominate a habitat, then we need a herd of goats but if we want some montane scrub of Juniper and Willow with tall herbs around the edges then the goats mustn’t get near.
By having a combination of all these grazing animals managed and moved into just the right places at just the right time of year we can certainly have a good ‘go’ at getting the conditions right for everything.
What is interesting about this question though is that it is also applicable to our lawns. #NoMowMay encourages us to leave our lawns un-mown for a whole month. We can extend it into ‘Let it bloom June’ but by then the daisies, dandelions and other short turf flowers of early May will have gone over and been outgrown by a multitude of other species.
How can we ensure we please all the species so we can please all our pollinators? Well, we can make a very good go at it by simulating some of those grazing animals with our strimmer and our lawnmower.
To create just the right tapestry of lawn heights in the garden we can use our mower to create paths through our meadow lawns, changing the flow of the paths (maybe missing out some of the special plants that may have colonised the uncut lawn) on a regular basis. This random cutting aims to simulate grazing animals moving through the landscape.
We can even simulate the different types of grazing animals by choosing different heights to cut the paths. If you want daisies again make like a sheep and cut it short, if you want Knapweed and Oxeye daisies to reflower later on in the season you can be a cow and cut some of them before they finish flowering, if you get brambles or nettles then browse them down to the floor like a goat.
By leaving some patches long, some patches medium height and some patches short you will make an interesting mosaic of different lawn habitats that suits as many different species as possible. At the end of the year, before the grass starts to go brown and drop its seeds, one of the most important things you can do for your lawn-meadow is to graze it down completely (just like a huge herd of bison on migration would do) and reset the process for next year’s #NoMowMay fun.
Whether its management of montane grassland and scrub for rare Arctic Alpines or a #NoMowMay lawn, conservation management is an important tool in ensuring we try to please all the species all the time as much as we possibly can. It isn’t a perfectly exact science, and it changes from year to year, and species to species, but the principles are there and for grasslands it’s really just all about the grazing (or mowing).
Meg Griffiths
Plantlife is building awareness of the threats that invasive species present to our native plants and animals.
We’re taking it right back to basics – explaining what makes an invasive plant species, and why they are becoming so problematic both in Wales, and globally.
Non-Native Species are species that, because of human activities, have become introduced in places beyond their native range. Physical barriers such as mountain ranges, oceans, rivers, and deserts mean that many ecosystems have evolved separately, creating distinct groups of species which are characteristic to certain places.
However, human activities like international trade and tourism now mean that species are being moved across these geographic barriers (either intentionally or otherwise). This shuttles species from the places where they evolved, into places where they have never been before.
Because non-native species evolved elsewhere, the new environments they enter haven’t yet developed ways of controlling their behaviour.
Some non-native species won’t be able to survive in our climate. Others will integrate with our habitats without damaging them (these are called ‘naturalised’ species). But certain species are able to thrive and dominate. These species are called Invasive Non-Native Species (INNS), and they present a serious problem not just to our ecosystems, but to our communities and our economies.
We are in a nature emergency. One in five species of UK vascular plant are now threatened with extinction, and the introduction of INNS is recognised as the second biggest threat to biodiversity after habitat loss. But how is it that these species are able to cause so much damage?
All of these factors mean that INNS are beginning to swamp many of our native ecosystems. This reduces the diversity of species present, which undermines the resilience of our habitats. When our ecosystems are vulnerable our economy is unstable. Natural Resources Wales now estimate that INNS are currently costing the Welsh economy at least £125 million a year. See below for some of Wales’ most destructive INNS to look out for, along with some information on how it is they are causing so much devastation.
Rhododendron now presents the single largest threat to our temperate rainforest ecosystems. This is especially a problem in Eryri, where it outcompetes native plants for nutrients and light, shading the forest floor and creating ecological dead zones. It also hosts a fungus-like disease-causing organism called Phytophthora. This causes the death of thousands of Larch trees in Wales each year and can also infect other species, such as Oak, Sweet Chestnut and Bilberry.
Now a familiar sight along riverbanks, the herbaceous annual Himalayan Balsam Impatiens glandulifera has become a serious problem species. Being an annual means the plant dies back in the winter, leaving the riverbanks bare and vulnerable to soil erosion. In the summer its rapid, swamping growth chokes out other riverbank species. Balsam also has the distinctive ability to fire its mature seeds out of ripe seedpods up to a distance of 7m, allow it to quickly colonize open areas.
Although not officially classed as invasive due to its use in forestry plantations, Sitka Spruce has all of the hallmarks of an INNS. It grows extremely fast in our climate and doesn’t support our native species. It also produces huge numbers of seeds that can disperse far and wide on the wind. The seeds from Sitka plantations are now spreading into priority habitats, altering their ecology. When Sitka seeds germinate in bogs, their roots take up too much water, causing the bog to dry out, they also shade out the rare and specialist plants that are present.
New Zealand Pygmyweed First seen in the UK in the 1970s this aquatic species has quickly spread across many of the waterways of southern England and Wales. The reason behind this rapid dispersal is vegetative reproduction – even a tiny section of stem broken from the mother plant can put down roots and form a whole new plant. Short stems break off easily and float, so these let the plant colonize new areas, and they’re easily transported between pools on livestock, dogs, clothing and even waterfowl. Once established the plant forms dense mats, shading out the water beneath and causing oxygen depletion.
Dave Lamacraft, Plantlife’s Lichen and Bryophyte Specialist, heads out to discover a wealth of extraordinary lichens which call Wales’ rainforests home.
This spring, have you thought about getting out to visit one of Plantlife’s wonderful Welsh nature reserves?
Calan Mai, the Welsh celebration of summer on May 1st, revives the importance of seasonal living and reminds us that our lives have always been connected with the yearly cycles of plant abundance.
Plantlife’s Vascular Officer Robbie Blackhall-Miles finds an exciting new plant species for Wales. Read more about the Hares Foot Clubmoss and its discovery in Eryri in his words.
New things are always exciting, right? The first time something in your garden flowers, a new patch of Bee Orchids in an unmown lawn, a new record of something rare on your NPMS patch? How about a whole new plant species for your country?
That’s exactly what happened to me in the summer of 2021 – but first, some background.
Clubmosses are a group of plants that really excite me. They are a group of plants that have been around in one form or another since the Silurian period (that’s over 430 million years ago). We have five species here in Eryri: Alpine, Marsh, Fir, Lesser and Stag’s Horn. We had another, Interrupted Clubmoss Lycopodium annotinum, until the late 1830’s when William Wilson last saw it above Llyn Y Cwn (The lake of the Dogs) high above Cwm Idwal. By 1894 J.E. Griffith had declared Interrupted Clubmoss extinct in Wales in his ‘Flora of Anglesey and Carnarvonshire’. I have hunted for Interrupted Clubmoss now for years to no avail – I won’t give up.
A good day out in the mountains for me is a ‘four clubmoss day’. A ‘five clubmoss day’ will take me past just a couple of very specific points where I would see Marsh Clubmoss Lycopodiella inundata as well, and would force me on to a longer and circuitous route to get to the places to see the other four.
When I botanise abroad, the Clubmosses feature as high points in my adventures and I was particularly pleased to find one of our own indigenous species, Stags Horn Clubmoss Lycopodium clavatum growing high in the mountains of South Africa when I was there in 2017.
Seeing these plants, that have remained little changed for such a long time that still exist in our anthropogenic world, really excites me. I always look out for them whether they be tiny plants of Lesser Clubmoss Selaginella selaginoides growing in Calcium rich seepages or fens, or huge sprawling mats of Alpine Clubmoss Diphasiastrum alpinum that grow high on our most exposed sheep grazed mountain slopes.
And so it was that one day in 2021 whilst walking a path that I rarely use, I spotted a clubmoss that really stood out to me. This clubmoss bore a resemblance to Stags Horn Clubmoss, but its growth habit was remarkably upright and the majority of its cones being solitary at the end of its stems (peduncles) rather than in twos or threes on the end of short stems (pedicels) at the apex of the peduncles. In the back of my mind, I remembered another species of clubmoss that had quite recently been confirmed as being present in the UK. So, using the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland’s Code of Conduct I collected a small sample and took lots and lots of photographs.
On returning home that day I contacted a friend, David Hill, to see what he thought of the find – we were both a little confused and unhappy to declare what we thought it may be. You see, Hares Foot Clubmoss Lycopodium lagopus hadn’t been found further south than Scotland in the UK, and was considered rare there. The confusion for us was that L. lagopus and L. clavatum are very closely related and share a lot of characteristics.
The conversation continued between us for almost a year before I was able to go back to the site and see the plants with fresh cones. This time I carefully collected another sample and even more photographs and took them with me to the BSBI Botanical Conference at the Natural History Museum in London, where I thought I would be guaranteed to bump into Dr. Fred Rumsey – the man who wrote ‘the paper’ on Hares Foot Clubmoss as a UK species.
Sure enough, Fred was happy to declare this to have all the characteristics of Lycopodium lagopus and thus a new member of the Welsh flora.
Seeing our Welsh Clubmosses is exciting, finding a brand spanking new one is REALLY exciting. I had bottled up my excitement at finding this ‘something new’ for an awfully long time. The specimens had sat on my desk for nearly two years before Dr Rumsey had managed to see them. So, I am really pleased to tell you about it now.
We have six species of Clubmoss in Wales again, but not with the one we thought we may rediscover. To see them all in one walk would be a very long walk indeed so a ‘four clubmoss day’ will remain a good day in the mountains, a ‘five clubmoss day’ is still exceptional and a ‘six clubmoss day’, I am afraid, is just exhausting. One day I may be able to have a ‘seven clubmoss day’- that Interrupted Clubmoss may yet still survive somewhere in the mountains of Eryri.
Chris Jones, the Warden of Kenfig National Nature Reserve, recently found the very rare fungus, during a routine survey.
Ever wondered why we need to go out and count rare plants? Meg Griffiths reflects on a summer of lichen hunting for the Natur am Byth! Project.
At Plantlife, there is a buzz of activity brewing as the 1st of May approaches. No Mow May is our biggest campaign – calling on all parts of society to join in a national movement to create thriving green spaces.
We focus the campaign on May because it’s in May that the flowering season really gets going. Leaving areas of grass unmown in May lets the flowers multiply, better supporting wildlife over the summer. We might be the ones driving No Mow May today, but the seasonal relevance of May 1st has roots much deeper than any modern campaign can claim.
Calan Mai or Calan Haf (meaning First day of May or First day of Summer) was a special day of celebration for Welsh people. In certain places it still is. This festival has ancient origins, sharing cultural roots with May Day, Beltane and the European Walpurgis Night. Regardless of their differences, these festivals are united in a shared celebration of the returning sunshine. The arrival of the sun encourages plant growth, and therefore carries the promise of plentiful food.
During Calan Mai, people would traditionally dance, sing, and feast to celebrate the summer after a cold and barren winter. The village green (‘Twmpath chwarae’) would be officially opened, where people would gather to dance, perform and play sports. ‘Twmpath’ refers to a mound that would be prepared on the green. This would be decorated with branches of oak trees, and a fiddler or harpist would sit upon it, playing music in the evening sun.
Our ancestors were deeply connected to nature’s phases. So much so that important dates in the seasonal calendar were considered sacred and even magic. Many of the festivities and traditions of Calan Mai are based in spirituality and botanical folklore.
On Ysprydnos (May eve, one of the Welsh ‘spirit nights’, when the veil between this world and the next is said to be thinner) locals would collect branches and flowers to decorate their homes, celebrating and welcoming growth and fertility. Fires would be burned to ward off harmful spirits, and young men would place bunches of rosemary tied with white ribbon on the windowsills of those they admired.
The festival also marks a special point in the agricultural calendar. This is the time that Welsh farmers would turn their herds out to pasture. These kinds of customs remind us that, until fairly recently, a knowledge of how plants, animals, and landscapes change with the seasons was deeply engrained in cultural norms.
Nowadays, with central heating, electricity and food readily available all year-round, we’ve become detached from the turn of the planet. We observe and experience the seasons passing, but for many, harsh winters are nothing more than an inconvenience (although this is far from true for everyone). It’s hard for us to imagine the enormous significance the start of summer had, and continues to have, on people who rely directly on the land for their survival.
Remembering Calan Mai and engaging with movements like No Mow May allow us to reconnect with the seasons. They remind us to tune into the habits of the Earth and become familiar again with the blooms and busts of nature. It also nurtures our own physical and mental wellbeing. Although we might forget it sometimes, we are creatures who have evolved in a world that changes with the seasons. When we appreciate how reliant we are on our planet and everything it provides us it becomes clear that the start of summer really is something worth singing and dancing for.
By letting us know if you or your community space is taking part, you’ll be added to our map showcasing the collective power that this campaign has.Now sit back and watch the wildflowers grow…
As the days get longer, the weather kinder, life starts to unfold and blossom around us. This spring, have you thought about getting out to visit one of Plantlife’s wonderful Welsh nature reserves?
We are fortunate to have 23 around the UK, including two sites accessible from south and mid Wales for you to discover.
Written by Jonathan Stone
Lugg Meadow extends to around 132 hectares in the floodplain of the river Lugg, east of Hereford. It is a living survivor of an ancient land tenure and farming system. Recorded in the Domesday Book, this is ‘Lammas meadow’, opened for communal grazing on Lammas Day (1st August) after the hay crop has been taken. In medieval times ownership would have been divided between dozens of owners, and the land doled out in strips marked by ancient dole stones. Today, larger parcels belong to a handful of different owners.
Look out for chequered purple, pink or white Snake’s-head Fritillary Fritillaria meleagris in early spring, with its bell-like flowers nodding on thin stems. As spring progresses the impression is of a mass of yellow buttercups almost as far as the eye can see. The flora includes two distinctive members of the carrot family. Pepper-saxifrage Silaum silaus, with its yellowish flowers, is characteristic of old meadows, whilst Narrow-leaved Water-dropwort Oenanthe silaifolia, with white or pinkish flowers, is a nationally scarce species only found in lowland England. Another grassland species is Wild Onion or Crow Garlic Allium vineale, so called because its leaves smell of garlic when crushed.
A host of other meadow species include Oxeye Daisy Leucanthemum vulgare and the thistle-like purple heads of Common Knapweed Centaurea nigra. In damper areas, visitors might see the frothy flowerheads of Meadowsweet Filipendula ulmaria and the tattered, pink flowers of Ragged-robin Silene flos-cuculi. By late June, the meadow has turned into a swaying hay field, but there is still colour among the hay. After harvest there is less interest for the botanical visitor, but Purple-loosestrife Lythrum salicaria and Flowering-rush might be spotted in wet ground by the river.
The great expanses of open grassland are an important breeding habitat for Curlew Numenius arquata and Skylark Alauda arvensis. Winter floods, which bring fresh supplies of nutrients to the meadow, create a seasonal lake attracting roosting gulls and visiting wildfowl.
There is plenty of space to park in the lane by the entrance off the A438, opposite the Cock of Tupsley pub. Grid ref: SO535403. Postcode: HR1 1UT.
N.B. access to the south of the A438 is restricted to public rights of way only from March to July, in order to protect ground nesting birds. Also, do be aware that, especially during winter months, both the upper and lower meadows may flood to a depth of over a metre for long periods of time.
Contact: Jonathan Stone, Nature Reserve Manager (South & West) jonathan.stone@plantlife.org.uk
Written by Lizzie Wilberforce
Cae Blaen-dyffryn is a small, species-rich grassland lying in the hills above Lampeter, in Carmarthenshire. The whole nature reserve is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) because of the importance of its species-rich neutral grassland, and Lesser Butterfly Orchid (Platanthera bifolia) population.
The reserve is sloping and affords good views across the surrounding landscape. In the spring, the grassland is just starting to come into its own, and you will find species like Red Clover Trofolium pratense, Common Knapweed, and the abundant yellows of Cat’s-ear Hypochaeris radicata, and Bird’s-foot Trefoil Lotus corniculatus coming into bloom. You may also find the basal leaf rosettes of both species of Butterfly Orchid.
By June you will find Butterfly Orchids are in full flower with their delicate, white-flowered spikes, along with the pinker flowering heads of Heath Spotted-orchid Dactylorhiza maculata and Southern Marsh-orchid Dactylorhiza praetermissa. In total we have recorded over 200 species of flowering plants in this one field, and you can find orchids in the thousands.
There are no public rights of way into the nature reserve and access is via stock gate from the A482 itself. Park safely in nearby lanes and access the site from the main road; please take care on the roadside. No dogs please. Grid Ref: SN605443, postcode SA48 8EZ
Contact: Lizzie Wilberforce, Plantlife Cymru Lead
lizzie.wilberforce@plantlife.org.uk
Lugg Meadow after a hay cut
Cae Blaen-dyffryn Aug 21, image by Lizzie Wilberforce
Only 3.2% of England’s land and sea is protected. This is why nature reserves are so important.
They are protected havens for wild plants and wildlife. Will you help keep them flourishing?
Dave Lamacraft
I’m lucky enough to have worked in our temperate rainforests for well over a decade now, and although much of our recent work here at Plantlife has had a focus on rainforest areas of England, through our LOST project in the Lake District and the Building Resilience project in South-West England, both funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, I’ve had the opportunity to get out into some of our Welsh rainforest in past weeks and been reminded just how special they are.
The first of these visits was to the National Trust’s Dolmelynllyn estate at Ganllwyd to look at some transplants of Lungwort lichens that we undertook 5 years ago. This was initially an attempt to rescue these lichens from an old Ash tree that was literally clothed in Lungwort lichens, of three varieties, that blew down in a summer gale. Transplanting these big leafy species is relatively straightforward to do in practical terms but hard to get right, the skill is in finding the right niche and one that’s away from the chomping teeth of slugs.
Success is far from guaranteed, and the majority of these transplants had succumbed to slug browsing. There were some notable successes though, with this ‘lob scrob’ Lobarina scrobiculata thriving on a Sycamore, all the better as this is one of the rarer lungwort lichens in Wales. The area where this was transplanted has spectacular communities of lichens on old Ash, Oak and Sycamore trees, probably the best display of lungwort lichens in Wales with abundant Tree Lungwort Lobaria pulmonaria, Parchment Lichen Ricasolia amplissima, ‘Stinky Stictas’ Sticta fuliginosa and Sticta sylvatica and Blue Jelly-skin Leptogium cyanescens.
Another site visit took me to a remote woodland near Trawsfynydd where we’re helping Natural Resources Wales work out how best to manage this woodland. Although only a few miles up the road from Ganllwyd this is a very different woodland to Dolmelynllyn being at higher altitude and exposed to higher levels of rainfall this favours different communities of lichen and bryophyte with what could be considered our ‘cloud-forest’ lichens and a rich ‘hyperoceanic’ bryophyte flora including many rare species.
Image by Dave Lamacraft
This has also reminded me just how diverse our rainforest is, in the same that way that no two wetlands, estuaries or mountains are the same, no bit of temperate rainforest is the same. They all differ according to geology, topography, aspect, climate, history, management etc; our temperate rainforest in South-West England is quite different to that in Western Scotland, with Wales somewhere in between. They are especially influenced by ‘oceanicity’ – the degree to which proximity to the Atlantic influences climate – and broadly speaking they are drier and sunnier to the south and much wetter to the north.
This basically means that you’ll never see the same things twice and there’s a lifetime of exploration to be had. I’d urge anyone to grab a hand lens (by no means essential, but definitely helps appreciate the small things) and head out to explore.
Chris Jones is the warden at Kenfig NNR. He is also a passionate fungus recorder. In 2022 he made an important discovery… A Date Waxcap, Hygrocybe spadicea! “A gorgeous shade of brown with yellow gills that I have only seen once in 20 years of looking for waxcaps, it was indeed a lucky day!”
Chris describes how the describes how the discovery came about:
“Kenfig National Nature Reserve is a magical place for me. It is 1339 acres of sand dune marvels and beauty, some days there is a new species surprise around the corner.”
“I am fungi obsessed, I love all the mycological delights but my favourites by far are the colourful grassland fungi, the waxcaps. About 23 call Kenfig their home.”
“We found the Date Waxcap on the day the volunteers decided to do a Dune Waxcap Hygrocybe conicoides survey on the frontal dunes – this waxcap is quite common in sand dunes. It is very variable in colour, from a deep red through oranges and yellow. As we talked and walked, in the corner of my eye, I spotted it! The unmistakable colouration of the Date Waxcap.”
Being a land of grass, here in Wales we see permanent pastures and rough grazing all around us. Most of these are intensively managed for sheep and cattle. However, less intensively farmed grassland can offer very important habitat for grassland fungi. This includes waxcaps, but also other important groups. One of the most stunning examples must surely be the Violet Coral Clavaria zollingeri.
Waxcaps are named for their shiny, waxy and often brightly coloured caps. They can look like blobs of red, orange, green or yellow wax in the turf. Here in Wales, we have some beautiful species such as the Pink or Ballerina Waxcap Porpolomopsis calyptriformis, and Scarlet Waxcap Hygrocybe coccinea. In fact, despite our small size, Wales is home to over half the number of waxcap species found in Britain.
Violet Coral. Trevor Dines
It’s not just our farmed grasslands that are good for fungi, either. Other habitats such as old lawns, churchyards and grass in parks and gardens can all be incredibly important. And of course, sand dune grasslands too, just like Kenfig. They just need to be sensitively managed.
We know many grassland fungi are declining and threatened. They are under-recorded, so their habitat may be destroyed due to a lack of knowledge. Waxcaps are also very sensitive to changes in their environment. Some cannot tolerate the regular ploughing, re-seeding, and fertilising on intensive farms. Consequently, some species, like Date-coloured Waxcap Hygrocybe spadicea are now very rare.
We are still learning about these beautiful fungi. We have too few fungi experts (mycologists) in Wales. We also have many unanswered questions about their distribution, ecology and conservation needs.
However, we do also have some amazing places for wildlife, places that we already know are important for grassland fungi. Kenfig NNR is one of these. Kenfig is an Important Plant Area (IPA), and Plantlife has been involved in its management for many years. Most recently this has been through our Green Links project based in Bridgend.
Parrot Waxcap Gliophorus psittacinus – Lucia Chmurova-Plantlife
Waxcap grasslands are an important part of Plantlife Cymru’s work. We are seeking to understand more about their distribution and management. We would also like to see them better protected from both accidental and deliberate damage.
Would you like to get involved with waxcap recording? You can download a site survey app that helps us find new, important places for grassland fungi. You don’t need to be able to identify species- just their colours!
Download a free Survey123 app on your smartphone or tablet:
Google Play (Android)
Apple Store (iOS)
Hit this link on your smart device: https://arcg.is/PLT5X
Select ‘Open in the Survey123 field app’ and then ‘Continue without signing in’. A message will pop up asking for access to your phone’s camera and storage – please click Yes / Allow
You are ready to go!
Of Wales’ total land area is used for farming
Half the number of Waxcap Species can be found in Wales
Kenfig National Nature Reserve is an Important Plant Area (IPA) – Plantlife has been a partner in managing Kenfig.
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