The Little Things in Life

I had a pleasant surprise this week finding a plant that has long alluded me, and boy is it tiny. I have worried for a while that I was missing Annual Pearlwort (Sagina apetala), and even more so since it was split from Slender Pearlwort (Sagina filicaulis). The latter I know well from pavement cracks in summer when it generally occurs in abundance and it quite obvious. Looking at the New Atlas I was surprised at how widespread Annual Pearlwort was meant to be given I was not finding it.

So it was a great pleasure this week to be down at Brotherton Ings (VC64) and to find a tiny pearlwort in a sparse community of winter annuals on a pocket of otherwise unvegetated substrate derived from deposits of pulverised fuel ash (the Ferrybridge Powerstation is just across the river). So  popped a few in a bag to look at under the microscope. Back at home a quick look met my hopes and it keyed out quite nicely to Annual Pearlwort. Even better it was growing with equally diminutive Slender Pearlwort so I could see the differences in sepal arrangement (erect versus patent), and the ciliate leaves of the latter. The latter species was very different (smaller in all parts, more branched,  more compact, and ascending not erect stems) from the typical urban plant and seems to be var. minor, I shall have to look for it further in this kind of niche and at least a month before I would ordinarily be looking for and recording the species.

Having a feel for the niche now, I thought I would see it I could find it at my Little Mouse-ear (Cerastium semidecandrum) site down by the railway to the north of Rothwell Country Park (VC63). It took a little searching but low and behold there it was and even tinier than the previous population. There would be no spotting this without being down on your knees consciously looking.

Some photos below of plants from the Rothwell colony, the first with equally diminutive Little Mouse-ear and Silvery Hair-grass (Aira caryophyllea). I think this is var. patula, the equivalent of filicaulis var. minor.

Little Mouse-ear Rediscovered

This weekend has been a traditional May Day affair, i.e. cool, squally, overcast and generally not encouraging of explorations far from home. So I stuck to a brief walk on my local patch, but in the event that proved more productive than I could have hoped. I wandered down to the Aire & Calder Navigation below Rothwell Country Park (VC63) and up onto an area that was historically the railway for Rothwell Colliery but is now short grassland over a free-draining substrate of clinker. Just the sort of place where you think winter annuals, and then get down on your hands and knees (or near as) to see what you can find.

It is classic habitat for Little Mouse-ear (Cerastium semidecandrum), a species I had looked for here in a previous year with no success. So I was pleasantly surprised to find numerous plants. This is a very rare species in West Yorkshire and the last record for this hectad (the Wakefield hectad SE32) appears to have been before 1888. It is so rare that the Flora of West Yorkshire (prematurely as it later turned out) declared it extinct, with this hectad being the only known historic location.

Photo by Hermann Schachner as published on Wikimedia Commons

I am in no doubt that part of the reason it seems so rare is that it flowers early and then dies off, and also because it can by very tiny. Below is a typically plant from my location shown against a 1 pence coin. This plant was flowering and fruiting.