Happy Christmas 2013

 Happy Christmas to all my friends and to all visitors to this webpost.
Winter Sunrise at Malham Tarn

Malham Tarn Seminar November 2013

Approach to Malham Tarn from Settle on the Sat morning

Sharon Flint gives a talk on the Caddis of Malham Tarn

Some of the audience

Group photo after lunch

Short walk after lunch

Dinner in the evening

Thanking the catering staff

Two geologists/landform people examine the lichens on the wall

Smile for the camera

Sunday morning 

Sunday morning expedition to look for aquatic plants

Add We found some Nitella. (An alga) This is the first time I have seen some here.

The Water people said that the Myriophyllum had disappeared from the Tarn. But Sharon said she had seen some in the Tarn and at the Water Sinks trough. So after we all departed I walked to the water sinks .. Yes there is Myriophyllum there (Water Milfoil)!!

Fungus Foray to Feizor 2013

This year's Craven Conservation Group Fungus foray was to Feizor.
Jane Rushworth organised it and we were pleased that Archie McAdam was able to come again.
This year he is teaching a U3A course at Skipton and he brought several members of his class with him.
Several people had also heard about the foray thorugh "Flowers of the Dales" booklet -- and we had 25 people!

It was pretty windy - Tee wind from the west coast
from beyond Morcambe Bay  20 miles away
was blasting straight at us and funnelling up the valley. 

Photographing a red waxcap - probably Hygrocybe coccinea 

And this is the red waxcap being photographed

Another view of those three waxcaps

The same hummock - but look how far behind the first group are

 We carried on up to the "Summit of the pass" and had lunch.
After lunch we explored the woods

Blushing Bracket - (Daedelopsis confragosa) from above

Blushing Bracket - (Daedelopsis confragosa) from below 

Then we  returned to Feizor and had warm drinks at the cafe there.

Some of our finds

Thanks to Rosie Sanderson for the photos of the fungi/ Group shots by myself.

It is four months since I was here with the Bishop

Settle Community Christmas Meal 2013

Settle Community Christmas Meal (Lunch and Tea) -25 Dec (Lunch and tea): St John's Church Hall, Settle; 11.45am - 4.45pm Old people and young people. Singles and families. £10. - Volunteer helpers/drivers also welcome.

If you have a neighbour in or near Settle who you think might like to come, please let them
know. Please book

Links to some posts to previous Settle Community Lunches - the 2013 event will be run along similar lines.

2009/2010
2010
2011

In 2012 we held it at Town Head Court, Settle. This year it will be at St John's Church Hall, Settle

YNU Bryophytes visit to Ponden on W Yorks /Lancs border - The mosses of Heathcliff and Catherine

Heathcliff and Catherine would have seen these very same mosses in their walks 160 years ago. (Atrichum crispum possibly excepted.)
When Catherine and Heathcliff were young  (Wuthering Heights Ch 6:) .. it was one of their chief amusements to run away to the moors in the morning and remain there all day, and the after punishment grew a mere thing to laugh at.

Racomitrium aciculare growing
on a wall top next to the reservoir

Ponden Clough is "Border Country" - The border between Lancashire and Yorkshire.

The Lancashire Yorkshire border is actually a very long border: From Ponden it stretches 40miles NW as the crow flies. I am more used to the gentle agriculturally inproved drumlins south of Hellifield, or the heathery  Bowland Fells, between Clapham and Slaidburn; or the limestone wood at Low Bentham or the limestone and caves of Gragareth. But here 15 miles SW, between the former-mill towns of Colne and Keighley, I was surprised to find such wild country.

But in fact , we were walking two miles away from the Pennine Way, and two miles away from Withins Height which looks down onto Haworth of Bronte fame. In the Bronte's time there must have been air pollution from Keighley and Bradford, and some blowing across from Colne..(though maybe it had got much worse by the 1950s.. and now it is much cleaner with respect to SO2).  

I approached the site from Colne and Laneshaw Bridge in Lancashire, - following a minor road for 5km with no turnoffs, before dropping down to  our meeting place at the head of Ponden Reservoir.

We walked through rough pasture fields to approach Ponden Clough - these steep sided millstone grit valleys are called cloughs.

3/4 of the way up -

on the slippage slope beside the stream in the picture above
we found Flag-moss. Discelium nudum
This rarish  moss - has  90% of its British distribution  in the Pennines.
http://www.bbsfieldguide.org.uk/sites/default/files/pdfs/mosses/Discelium_nudum.pdf

You can see the long setae (stems)  -2.5 cm , and the capsules are not yet fully developed.
The leaves at the base of the setae are minute.
The main photosynthetic organ for the plant is
the protonema which is a green slime on the soil.

Examining the Flag-moss

No walk I take nowadays would be complete without my saying "Oh, look at the Klebsormidium"
Klebsormidium crenulatum - I see this filamentous alga  on every walk now.

Tom did say that he had seen green algae on millstone grit walls of the Pennines  when he was young.. but was it the same filamentous alga?. We saw it on lots of walls and trees on the walk... It may even have been the alga that was colonising the new plastic stiles that have been built for the Millennium way -- though I would need to check the species more carefully.

Here is a good fruiting specimen of  Rhizomnium punctatum ( Dotted Thyme- moss) 

We saw six Sphagna:  fallax, fimbriatum, palustre, squarrosum, denticulatum and russowi
Here are the last two:-

Sphagnum denticulatum
Cow-horn Bog-moss
(The other members of the "Cow-horn" bog moss group all
grow in more basic conditions than
the acid conditions of the millstone grit)

Spagnum russowi - growing with heather on a north facing bank 

I call it "Rugby sock sphagnum" because the branches are striped red and green.



On the walls near the road, track and reservoir we found many mosses. I continue to try hard to learn the "Barbula-type" mosses -  tiny acrocarps with leaves up to 3m long, that here in fact were making quite big patches.

Didymodon rigidulus  This has very straight leaves when wet.
It has a subulate tip to the leaves

Didymodon insulanos - The leaves curve a little when wet.

Greater Pincushion -moss Ptychomitrium polyphyllum

And finally near the reservoir..

Atrichum crispum - (Fountain Smoothcap) 

distribution is mostly the Pennines and Wales.
It grows in acid places beside reservoirs and rivers.  

It was growing next to the reservoir with  .
???Pleuridium acuminatum Taper-leaved Earth moss.....

The earliest British record of Atrichum crispum is from Rochdale, Lancashire,by John Nowell in 1848. It is an introduction from N America. All the plants in Britain are male plants. So there are no capsules and no spores here. All the plants could be a single clone, spread by fragments or gemmae. (Nowell worked in the cotton industry and lived all his life in Todmorden on the Yorkshire Lancashire Border. He discovered the first British record of Cynclidium stygium at Malham Tarn.) 

We identified 90 different species which is quite good for a millstone grit area... Tom Blockeel will be keying out a few extra ones.. will we reach 100?  He will write a report in the YNU Journal next year
A big thank you to Tom Blockeel and the YNU Mosses - Bryophytes Section for running the walk.

"Moss quotes" from Wuthering Heights on the internet:-. the only quote I could find just now is Nellie's report on visiting the graveyard:


Chapter 34 (“Imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth”)

I sought, and soon discovered, the three headstones on the slope next the moor: the middle one grey, and half buried in the heath; Edgar Linton's only harmonised by the turf and moss creeping up its foot; Heathcliff's still bare.

I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.

-----------------------------

Like to learn about Churchyard mosses?.  Look out for the Ultra beginners Moss workshop I will be running at St Leonard's Churchyard, Ribblehead, N Yorkshire sometime in the next two months.

John Bell leads Big Sing at Settle

Sunday 22 sept saw "The Big Sing" at Settle Parish Church led by John Bell of the Iona Community

People waiting in the church

Handing out the song sheets

By the time everyone came there were 150 people.
We sang some psalms set to modern words and music..

--the Lord will be your refuge (Psalm 94).. bearing in mind suffering elsewhere in the world - on a day when a church was stormed in Pakistan, and the supermarket shooting had taken place in Kenya


There was a song about women in the bible.

John Bell at the front

Group picture

Explaining the finer details

An opportunity to promote One World Week and CEL

We sang songs 

Thank you to all who came from Langcliffe singers, Settle Voices and all the Churches in Settle that made it such a good event

Bur Marigolds - Beggarticks

 I'll be adding text shortly

the fruit of the bur marigold do indeed look like ticks.

View from my knee down to my (wellingtoned) feet.