Setting off on a morning with thick frost and a strong north westerly I expected to have a short, chilly foray to Galley Hill to look for a bit of unidentified liverwort from the cliffs. The sample collected in December disappeared before I got it home. A few acrocarps had immature capsules in December which I hoped would be a bit more mature now and ready for identification.

The seafront at Bexhill was protected from the worst of the wind and the sun was bright so it was actually pleasant weather for leisurely moss hunting. The Turnstones that had run ahead of me on the undercliff last time were still skitting around busily, a few steps ahead of groups of people enjoying the good weather.

The liverwort was easy to find on damp cliffs under a flush, but so grey and mushy that I couldn’t make out any features in the field other than that it was a leafy liverwort with round leaves. With a bit of magnification it was clearly Solenostoma gracillimum with an obvious leaf border, not as exciting as I had hoped but mixed with it was Riccardia chamedryfolia.

The Tortula atrovirens was now dotted with dark capsules.

Areas of vertical earth on the cliffs was packed with tiny fruiting acrocarps, some Fissidens viridulus and Weissia controversa var. controversa. The Aloina covering a fallen concrete block was shimmering with long setae and developing capsules and just three swollen fruit with long peristome teeth. There was more Solenostoma hiding in sand around the leaf rosettes.

It took a while to find the next colony of Aloina and I thought the plants might have been covered in mud streaming off the cliffs after all the recent rain. The colony was there and hadn’t matured very much but the little fungi that grew amongst it in December had disappeared. I thought both colonies looked like Aloina ambigua although the membrane at the base of the peristome teeth was obscured by the capsule mouth.

Happily Tom confirmed that both colonies are A. ambigua and pointed out that the leaf tip usually differs from the more common A. aloides: mucronate in A. aloides and blunt in A. ambigua.

The second, smaller length of cliff petered out before I crossed into TQ70U but a flat area of stable shingle was sheltered by beach huts and Gorse bushes and carpeted in moss so I was able to make a start on this poorly recorded tetrad.

A woman with an excitable spaniel stopped to ask if I was doing the BSBI New Year Plant Hunt and still seemed interested when I said that I was looking at mosses. It would have been a good spot to do the flower hunt with Gorse, Winter Heliotrope and Carpobrotus edulis all in flower along with a lone Daisy. I didn’t realise that Winter Heliotrope was fragrant until Jacqui mentioned it in her last post: https://sussexbryophytes.wordpress.com/2022/01/03/mosses-along-the-highways-and-byways-around-plumpton-green/. I’m still trying to pin down the scent which reminds me of of some kind of subtle but expensive soap.

Public loos with any type of soap are welcome after scratching around the muddy cliffs and dog-frequented paths and hot water was a rare treat at Glyne Gap! Back to scouring the stable shingle there was Hypnum lacunosum, Syntrichia ruralis, Brachythecium albicans, Pseudocrossidium hornschuchianum and quite a bit of fruiting Barbula unguiculata.

Further down the beach Bryum argenteum was thriving in this harsh habitat along with Tortula muralis and a tiny bit of Syntrichia montana.

TQ70N now has 42 taxa recorded so central Bexhill can turn green! TQ70T, largely composed of sea but including the eastern edge of Galley Hill now has 24 species recorded and TQ70U is up to 16 with plenty of scope to find things inland towards Pebsham.