Friday 20 August 2010

Excursion to Rivelin Glen, Sheffield, 01/07/2010

We walked west along Bole Hill Road, dropping down into a wood adjacent to the Hagg Hill lane allotments. Heading through the wood and the allotments, we crossed Hagg Hill Lane and emerged into the pastures shown as Rivelin Glen on the 1:25000 OS map (between Long Lane and the Rivelin Valley Road.


Plants seen and identified
Obviously there was a lot more, but we focused on things that were relatively uncommon, or presented interesting opportunities for using keys. We used either the Field Flora of the British Isles (Stace 1997) or The Revised Wild Flower Key (O'Reilly & Rose 2007).

Athyrium filix-femina (Lady Fern)
Dryopteris dilatata (Broad Buckler Fern)
Dryopteris filix-mas (Male Fern)
Polystichum aculeatum (Hard Shield Fern)
Dryopteris affinis agg. (Scaly Male Fern)
Pteridium aquilinum (Bracken)

Symphytum x uplandicum (Russian Comfrey)
Mercurialis perennis (Dog's Mercury)
Stachys x ambigua (a hybrid Woundwort; Stachys palustris x Stachys sylvatica)
Stachys sylvatica (Hedge Woundwort)
Vicia cracca (Tufted Vetch)
Geranium x oxonianum (Druce's Cranesbill)
Hypochaeris radicata (Cat's Ear)
Galium saxatile (Heath Bedstraw)
Vaccinium myrtillus (Bilberry)
Calluna vulgaris (Heather)
Pilosella officinarum (Mouse Ear Hawkweed)
Centaurea nigra (Knapweed)
Dactylorhiza fuchsii (Common Spotted Orchid).
Prunella vulgaris (Selfheal)
Lotus pedunculatus (Greater Bird's Foot Trefoil)
Hieracium sp. (a Hawkweed)

Juncus effusus (Soft Rush)
Juncus conglomeratus (Compact Rush)
Juncus bulbosus (Bulbous Rush)
Carex viridula odeocarpa (a Yellow Sedge)
Carex remota (Remote Sedge)
Deschampsia flexuosa (Wavy Hair Grass)
Holcus mollis (Creeping Soft Grass)
Alopecurus geniculatus (Marsh Foxtail)
Holcus lanatus (Yorkshire Fog)

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According to the Flora of the Sheffield Area (1988), a few of these species have not been recorded for these 1km squares (monads) previously. Particularly notable are Hard Shield Fern and the hybrid Woundwort. Neither have many sites within the city boundary.

Interestingly, Marsh Woundwort (Stachys palustris) was recorded 'by a streamside, in Rivelin Glen' by the Sheffield Naturalists Club in 1910 (in the Flora of the Sheffield Area); one imagines the hybrid plants might be this population, (mis-)recorded in 1910, or the hybridised descendants of it.

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