Identification notes
One of our rarest Didymodon species, now known only from a single disused chalk pit in Wiltshire, and legally protected as a Schedule 8 species listed on the Wildlife & Countryside Act 1981 (as amended). Fortunately, the pit is within a SSSI, and every so often management is undertaken to hold back natural succession and weathering of the shaded, soft chalk faces that are its home. Fortunately, it is able to spread quickly into suitable new habitat niches via multicellular gemmae produced in abundance in leaf axils.
Despite (or perhaps because of) its extreme rarity, it is probably fair to say that D. glaucus is a connoisseur’s moss. It is so small and unassuming that finding it involves careful, close-up scrutiny of its habitat. It grows with a range of other small species, including Fissidens gracilifolius, Didymodon tophaceus and Pohlia melanodon.
