Autumn workshop 1979: Queen Mary College, London

HomeEventsAutumn workshop 1979: Queen Mary College, London

27 October 1979 - 28 October 1979

Workshop report

This was held over the weekend of October 27th and 28th at the Plant Biology Field Station of Queen Mary College near Brentwood, Essex. About eighteen members and two guests attended the Workshop and in addition the organiser was assisted by Drs. K.J. Adams, A.J. Harrington and H.L.K. Whitehouse.

On Saturday Grays and Warren chalk quarries at Thurrock were visited. The Essex Naturalists’ Trust Reserve warden, Mr. Colin Studholme, kindly acted as guide around the largely overgrown Grays Quarry where no unusual bryophytes were found but a good range of chalk scrub and grassland species were collected for later examination. At the more recently opened Warren pit we failed to refind the unidentified acrocarp discovered by Mark Hill a few years ago but Harold Whitehouse and Chris Preston did add Lophozia perssonii to the records for v.c. 18.

The afternoon and evening were spent in the field laboratory examining the morning collections and Dr. Whitehouse gave a talk on ‘Arable Field Bryophytes’. On Sunday it was intended to follow up the talk by examining local arable fields but the recent mild weather had persuaded local farmers to plough all their fields and the party visited instead Mores Wood, Navestock, to see a good range of bryophytes on basic and acid soils. We also visited South Weald Country Park to see the locally abundant Dicranum tauricum which grows on a variety of tree and shrub barks. After lunch laboratory work continued interspersed by a talk by Peter Wanstall on the problems and methods of examining members of the Polytrichales.

P.J. Wanstall

Location:

Queen Mary College, London