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astridbiddle.bsky.social
Joint BSBI and BBS recorder for Hertfordshire. 🌱Celebrating the joy of Botany and Bryology. ❤️Aquatic plants & many other. Scarce Tufted-sedge. Plant ecology. Rivers, ponds & lakes.
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Leptodontium gemmascens at Fir & Ponds Wood, Herts. On a single ant hill. Unfortunately, rabbits had started digging at it since my last visit in January. It now clung onto a thin projection, teetering on the edge. Rabbits needed for their distribution & their aid in enriching the decaying grass.

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

Fir & Ponds Wood I was looking for Leptodontium gemmascens. On top of an ant hill in acidic grassland was some Pleuridium acuminatum. It's a pioneer species, with extensive patches on the bare soil produced by rabbit diggings. Oddly, it was a first record for the site.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

On Sunday, I will give a talk at the BSBI England Annual Meeting. Tune in to hear about the story of Scarce Tufted-sedge (C. cespitosa), a fabulous habitat engineer, how it was discovered in the UK, and how it’s doing. Finally, what HMWT is doing to secure it for the future? #speciesreintroduction

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

Wimpole Estate today. Temperatures slowly dropped towards zero, turning dampness gradually towards wet sleet. Leucodon sciuroides on buttery gault bricks of the walled garden. A calcicole which had declined in lowland England (SO2 pollution). Held here, but a slow coloniser & therefore vulnerable.

submitted 13 days ago • 1 comment

Plant translocations & reintroductions is relatively new science. Learning from others' successes & failures enables progress. Understanding species' autoecologies & pressures, combined with good protocols, is a good start. It's fascinating to see what approaches work. I want to dig into that data!

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

Baroness Sheehan, Chair of House of Lords Environment & Climate Change Committee: "It is also clear that existing measures to curb nitrogen pollution fall short in managing it effectively." Dire effects on ecosystem health & biodiversity would not be overstating this! @nickwilson.bsky.social

submitted 21 days ago • 2 comments

At Monks Wood, Cambs on Sunday in compartment 7 and down in a ditch looking for Plagiochila at eye level. A huge Ash buttress stretching into the water, covered in a curtain of Anomodon viticulosus. It's slow to colonise new habitats. A really beautiful moss on a sunny February day. ❤️

submitted 24 days ago • 1 comment

Monks Wood today looking at bryophytes. Hazel was infected by the gall-mite Phytoptus avellanae, which caused the buds to swell. This is similar to big bud disease in currents that infected my allotment Black Currents, reducing next year's fruiting wood. @wildflowerhour

submitted 26 days ago • 0 comments