Dorset Pete's Patches

Today I was being guided around several of Dorset Pete's local patches. We quit Portland for the day and headed maybe fifteen miles westwards, arriving at West Bay. Our plan was to do a little urban botanising and have a look at a small patch of cliff that apparently held 'some good stuff'. I could see that twinkle in his eye again, but he wouldn't spill the beans. First up though, Pete wanted me to check a small tree he'd earlier spied growing on the wrong side of a barbed wire fence and bramble thicket. 

Through binoculars it looked suspiciously like a Bay. Wow, what were the chances of that? If living on Skye has taught me anything, it's how to get over a barbed wire fence and pretty soon I was stepping my way through the brambles until I was up alongside the tree. Yep, it definitely looked like a Bay tree to me, I no longer needed to visit Radipole now! 

Bay Laurus nobilis - presumably birdsown as there were no other trees nearby

There's a species of psyllid that causes puckered galls to form along the leaf edges of Bay. Despite having a good old look around, we failed to find it on this tree. This was the first time Pete had actually stood next to this tree and he too agreed it was a Bay, which is what he'd long suspected it was all along. The aromatic leaves clinched the ID.  

Happy with that, we headed towards a grassy field and a second new plant for me. This one was less easy to find, and without Pete's intimate site knowledge I doubt I'd have even attempted to look for it outside its flowering period. But we persevered and, despite several false starts, Strawberry Clover hurled itself onto my lifelist!

A very small Strawberry Clover Trifolium fragiferum - note the recurved veins at the leaf margins

It's hard to describe quite how miniscule this plant is for a clover, each set of three leaves must have spanned all of 5mm! There were plenty of equally tiny White Clover plants all around and without the excellent Veg Key I suspect we would never have sussed it. Strawberry Clover became the most recent addition to a long line of plants that I would very much like to revisit during the flowering season. Too often I found myself thinking along those lines whilst in England. We then spent a while trying to find Poa bulbosa, a grass that occurs in quantity in this particular field. Except we couldn't make anything match (Pete later realised he meant Alopecurus bulbosus, which is an altogether very different grass and would explain why we couldn't find the Poa). 

Moving on, we passed the (in)famous West Bay shelter, which is where Gavin Haig seawatches from when the weather is shite. Walking in the footsteps of giants indeed. I could see that Pete was becoming more and more excitable as we approached the base of a low cliff. "There's something here you need to see" he stated. I spied a load of scrunched up, stonecrop type stuff...erm? "That's Sea-heath" came the answer, which is a plant I have seen before but I didn't recognise it on this occasion. However... "Holy f*ckin' shit!" I exclaimed, "Is that Rottingdean Sea-lavender!?!?" I blurted. Honestly, I've never seen anybody go from excited to crestfallen as quickly as Pete did. "Whaaat? How the hell did you recognise that???" he asked. Ha, I've no idea buddy - somehow I recognised it from seeing it at Rye Harbour several years back. It's a very smart plant, even when not flowering. Here, have some pics

The unlikely sight of Rottingdean Sea-lavender Limonium hyblaeum amongst Sea-heath Frankenia laevis - in Dorset!

Pete told me that these two plants arrived shortly after many tonnes of ballast were brought on site several decades back. I had no idea Rottingdean Sea-lavender occured away from Rottingdean and Rye, both in East Sussex. The BSBI map shows quite a few colonies in East Sussex, along with this Dorset site. There are also a couple of inland dots further north, one east of London and one in Yorkshire, presumably both garden escapees? The BSBI map for Sea-heath shows that it too is rather localised, occurring sporadically around the English and Welsh coastlines, but becoming exceptionally rare north of Norfolk.

Positively thrilled by two such unexpected additions to the yearlist (which, by the way, had just topped 400 species!) I followed Pete up the side of the cliff finding such oddities as Three-cornered Garlic, Soapwort and Bear's Breech, and then followed him around the town as we slowly ambled our way back towards the car. Further additions included Pot Marigold and, by way of a change, a native species in the guise of Sea Pearlwort.

Sea Pearlwort Sagina maritima - I keyed this out as Pete drove us to our next destination!

So that was West Bay done, next stop was Bridport where we were undertaking some proper urban botany. I was quietly hoping that we'd score Rue-leaved Saxifrage. Pete said he knew a wall where it grows but also mentioned that it was still very early in the season and it may not be up yet. Only one way to find out. A short while later and...

Rue-leaved Saxifrage! Throw your hands in the air and wave 'em like you just don't care!

I was very happy to spot this single, solitary Rue-leaved Saxifrage plant poking up from a crack in the wall top, and even happier when we noticed a small carpet of the stuff growing a few feet further along the wall. I've only seen this plant one time before, growing on the rooftop of a Swanage pub and viewed through binoculars. On that occasion the landlord had come out, told me there was nothing wrong with his roof and to 'get gone'. I'd told him I was looking at a plant and to piss off, seeing as I was on the public street, though I didn't precisely hang around afterwards. Now, some six years later, I had all the time in the world to admire this little beauty of a plant. Pete looked pretty happy too, now that the pressure to find it was off.

The walls of Bridport offered up several more nice plants, most of which were yearticks for me. 

This Lesser Swinecress Lepidium coronopus had us confused for a while!

Shining Crane's-bill Geranium lucidum at the foot of a wall

Rustyback Asplenium ceterach - a very rare plant indeed on Skye

Sun Spurge Euphorbia helioscopia with the rust Melampsora euphorbiae. Also a bit of White Stonecrop

Stream Water-crowfoot Ranunculus penicillatus (I have Pete's solemn word on that ID!)

We took a slow wander out of town and headed up into Allington Hill NR, a mixed woodland with a fern-rich understorey. We'd barely entered when I spied some interesting-looking umbellifer leaves

That purple spotting on the stems is a good clue as to this plant's identity

This was a large patch of Hemlock Conium maculatum. Pete was earlier telling me that he often finds it on nutrient-enriched sites (which is a nice way of describing slurry pits) and this patch, though not on a slurry pit, was growing amongst nettles, a sure indicator that the soil here has been enriched somehow. He also pointed out the 6ft tall dead heads from last year, blimey I hadn't realised it grew that tall! Hemlock doesn't occur in the far northwest, so I was pleased to encounter it here before heading back to Skye. 

Onwards into the woods we ventured, finding many Soft Shield-ferns within. This is a very scarce plant in the far north, so I took the opportunity to familiarise myself with it some more. I'm used to seeing Hard Shield-fern on Skye and I was quite taken by how well Soft Shield-fern arches, almost forming a vaguely Dryopteris-like shuttlecock. Hard Shield-ferns never do that, more usually drooping below horizontal. 

Soft Shield-fern Polystichum setiferum 

Pete spotted a dark-leaved shrub in the understorey which he'd noticed before but had never named. I recognised it from my Epsom Common days but ran it through the Veg Key anyway, just in case I was mistaken.

Pete's mystery shrub

It keyed through to a species pair, one having green petioles and the other red. Clearly this was the latter option - Portugal Laurel Prunus lusitanica, a lifer for Pete and the first I'd seen for several years. In fact, possibly the first I'd seen for an entire decade! It's currently unknown from Skye, though I wouldn't be surprised if it occurs sporadically in deeper woodlands, so I was pleased to catch up with it here. We found several patches of violets, none of which were in flower. But Pete knew what they'd be in these woods and keying them through with the Veg Key confirmed his thoughts - Early Dog Violet Viola reichenbachiana, a species that is essentially absent from Scotland and so, once again, something I was very pleased to catch up with whilst down south. Something that definitely does occur in Scotland, yet is decidedly infrequent on Skye, is Hedge Mustard. We found good numbers growing in an overgrown meadow just outside of Allington Hill woods

Hedge Mustard Sisymbrium officinale - found here growing a long way from a hedge

We returned into Bridport via various backstreets, finding Argentinian Vervain Verbena bonariensis growing between cracked flagstones in a large courtyard, dutifully keyed through now that Slender Vervain V.rigida has been shown to be present at scattered localites across lowland Britain. We (well, I) then struggled with a sizeable forget-me-not growing along a pavement. Despite being rather large, and the flowers rather tiny, it really did appear to be a bog standard Field Forget-me-not and not a horticultural species. 

Field Forget-me-not Myosotis arvensis growing along a busy pavement

Back at the car, Pete suggested one last site to visit before we returned to Portland Bird Obs for the night. We headed down country lanes and eventually popped out at Black Down where, I think, there's an outcropping of Upper Greensand which makes for interesting flora and associated fauna. We were welcomed by Beech woods before emerging onto the open slopes where a chill wind met us. Hunkering down we soon found Western Gorse plus hundreds of tiny Climbing Corydalis plants emerging from bare soil.  

Western Gorse Ulex gallii with spines that you can flex upwards without being jabbed to buggery

It was around this time that my camera battery gave up the ghost, so that's the end of my images from the day. Back at Portland Bird Obs we absolutely destroyed a hugely fantastic Chinese takeaway. We may have demolished beers or wine (or maybe both) too. Not sure. But I went to bed replete and relaxed, always a lovely feeling! I ended the day on 427 plant species for the year, a very substantially higher tally than either Pete or Ghostie had so far attained. I needed to create a comfortabe buffer zone between us if I was to have any hope of keeping up with them once the season gets underway. Living in the far north, as I do, is great, but plant diverstity up there is distinctly less than in southern England. I simply couldn't afford to slow down yet, I had to keep botanising the crap out of the south. 

I received a comment that "I've never even heard of any of the shit you play on your blog", which I'm sure can't be true. But anyway, maybe (maybe......!) that person will have heard of this bunch. This is The Black Keys (ie the band...) playing Keep Me (and that's the track name). No good reason for choosing this other than I like it and it makes my head bop. Hope you enjoy!