Worcestershire Record No. 19 November 2005 p. 43

Our meetings are to help beginners learn their mosses and liverworts, rather than high-powered recording sessions. Please bring sandwiches to all outdoor meetings, which are on Sundays, starting at 10.30 am. Note that the meeting in January is indoors on a Friday.

You are very welcome to suggest venues for future outdoor meetings; please include grid references and details for parking.

October 23rd

Jonathan Sleath has suggested we explore the ancient, semi-natural woodland of the new Woodland Trust reserve at Credenhill Park Wood in Herefordshire. Park at SO 455440.

November 13th

Helmeth Wood, Church Stretton, Shropshire. Dan Wrench will meet us at a lay-by on the B4371 Much Wenlock road (SO 468932).

Indoor meeting in the Education Room at the new Museum and Resource Centre in Ludlow, 10.30 am to 4.30 pm. Please book with Mark Lawley (see below) if you wish to come to this meeting. There will be no curriculum for the day. Rather, the day will be devoted to helping resolve your microscopical problems – procedures you find difficult, and plants you cannot identify. Please let me know when you book which techniques you want to practise, and bring with you:-

mosses and liverworts you have collected, particularly any which you have been unable to identify with certainty;

a compound microscope if you have one. The Museum has 10 stereomicroscopes for dissecting specimens;

any identification guides/floras you have;

dissecting equipment: petri dishes, watchmaker forceps, microscope slides and coverslips, etc.

The new Library and Museum Resource Centre lies to the rear of the Feathers Hotel and Somerfield supermarket. To reach it, leave the A49 at the roundabout where the A4117 from Kidderminster meets the A49. Go along Henley Road for about half a mile, and turn left into Gravel Hill. At the traffic lights, turn right into Station Drive and then immediately left into the car park. The new Museum and Resource Centre is the modern building near the far right corner of the car park. It costs £3 to park for the day. However, there is no charge for using the Museum’s facilities. Enter the building from the west side (near Parkway shops). The Museum is to the left of the foyer. We will be using the Education Room on the top floor. There is a lift. We will have lunch at a pub in town (no food is permitted in the Museum).

Sam Bosanquet will lead us from a parking place about one mile south-east of Forest Coal Pit at SO 292200 about a mile and a half contouring round The Sugarloaf to Cwm Gwent (SO 270195) in Monmouthshire on the north side of the hill. The Old Red Sandstone is base-rich, and in 2001 Sam found Dicranum fuscescens, Drepanocladus cossonii and Marchantia poylymorpha ssp. montivagans in nearby Cwm Nant-du.

Ray Woods will meet us at Burfa in east Radnorshire to explore wet land on Radnorshire Wildlife Trust’s reserve, and to see if we can refind Buxbaumia aphylla on the old hill-fort. Park just up the wide forestry road off the lane at SO 278609.

The British Bryological Society’s Spring Meeting for 2006 will be in Staffordshire, which is convenient for most Border Bryologists. Details of this meeting can be found on the BBS’s web-site at www.britishbryologicalsociety.org.uk and in their magazine Field Bryology.

Mark Lawley,
12A Castleview Terrace,
Ludlow
SY8 2NG

Email: m.lawley@virgin.net