Meeting report

Our meeting place at Deerleap sits high on the Mendip scarp with fine views stretching over the Somerset Levels to the south. So high, in fact, that we were greeted on arrival by little flurries of snow and we never did get that view. By the time all ten of us had got layered up, we were already quite chilled. So, after quickly admiring the car park wall, covered in drifts of bryophytes Mendip-style (Homalothecium sericeum, Neckera complanata, Porella platyphylla and two species of Tortella), to warm up a bit we enthusiastically stomped for about 20 minutes to an area of rough grassland and bracken with some nice limestone outcrops.

Our route initially took us through bryologically dull neutral grassland, but it was certainly worth the walk as the thin soil around the outcrops supported a rich community of species. A large drift of Tortella squarrosa was admired first, and then in rapid succession came: Reboulia hemisphaerica, Rhodobryum roseum, Entosthodon mouretii, Encalypta vulgaris, Riccia subbifurca and R. sorocarpa. Nearby, we admired Didymodon ferrugineus and, on a tumbledown wall, Plasteurhynchium striatulum, Cirriphyllum crassinervium and Ctenidium molluscum.

After so much excitement and lunch on some convenient rock ledges, we headed off to search for some unusual acid rock exposures where interesting calcifuges had been found ten years previously. Unfortunately, the route chosen by the leader was questionable and everyone ended up having to climb over at least one barbed-wire fence. We eventually did find the rocks (subsequently confirmed on a geological map as outcropping from a narrow band of Carboniferous quartzitic sandstone that extends into nearby Ebbor Gorge) and then the search was on to find Hedwigia stellata and Nogopterium gracile, both of which in N. Somerset are only currently known from this location. Eventually we succeeded and people queued up to pay homage and take photographs. At this point, the group became a bit fragmented and we managed to lose Pete Flood, although fortunately he found his car easily enough and sensibly headed back home to warm up.

Dropping downslope into a delightful little humid wooded gully, the rest of us happily browsed shrubs and trees dripping with epiphytes in rocky woodland. Although the daylight, which had been poor all day, was really starting to fail, we enjoyed luxuriant Cryphaea heteromalla, Plenogemma phyllantha and Lewinskya striata, an epiphyte that has become quite common in Somerset. There was Sciuro-hypnum populeum on stones and a wonderfully luxuriant patch of Anomodon viticulosus on a drystone wall. Some shoots had near-mature capsules held on long setae, something that few of us had seen before (Smith says they occur rarely). In the fading light, they were certainly a challenge to photograph! A splendid ash tree with buttress-like exposed roots provided us with an opportunity to compare the complanate shoots of Homalia trichomanoides and Neckera complanata side by side. Meanwhile, the walls supported more P. striatulum, its shoots bristling with capsules. A final treat was a small colony of Lejeunea cavifolia, new to some.

Thanks to everyone who gamely braved the wintry weather, especially those who had travelled from as far afield as Hampshire and Devon.

Sharon Pilkington 23/01/2025