Source: Adastra 2020, published by the Sussex Biodiversity Record Centre, May 2021

As most of 2020 was dominated by the coronavirus pandemic, our bryological recording, like everything else, had to adapt to the restrictions on activities.

Mosses and liverworts are modest plants, fitting themselves into gaps and colonising unusual substrates shunned by most vascular plants. In this strange year, denied our usual freedoms it would have been foolish to try and compete with an aggressive virus, so we have had to behave more like a moss and be adaptable, finding space and time to safely search for bryophytes; getting out early before crowds gathered, scouring our gardens then local parks and woods during the spring lockdown and searching for less populated woods and stream sides during the summer heatwave.

Before lockdown, in the heady weeks of January and February, we could combine a mossing trip with a visit to the theatre or an art gallery then warm up in cramped cafes. My co County Recorder Brad Scott and I made a few forays to Eastbourne to record colonies of the liverwort Michel’s Balloonwort Sphaerocarpos michelii, which was enjoying a bumper year after the warm, wet autumn of 2019. Female plants have inflated balloon-like structures that surround the sex organs and ripe capsules are needed as this species can only be separated from the equally rare S. texanus by examining the markings on spores. Several trips to Eastbourne were needed to find mature plants. A southern species, it was last seen, in gaps between brick paving, on a couple of Eastbourne streets in 2007 and has never been recorded anywhere else in the county.

Just west of Brighton, on stable shingle at Aldrington Basin, a large colony of Didymodon tophaceus was found fruiting copiously but this industrial stretch of seafront is more notable for the loss of rare mosses found over 100 years ago than for new finds.

Whitehalk Hill contains a prime bit of chalk grassland surrounded by the estates of East Brighton but the uncommon mosses Weissia controversa var. crispata and Weissia condensa were both found on a sunny day in early spring. This is a fragile site and an area of it is threatened with development.

Rural trips at the beginning of the year all featured plenty of mud as well as moss finds; Brad compared the High Weald Landscape trail to foot-deep melted chocolate and when Jacqui and I met up for a trip to Chiddingly we retreated to tarmac roads after tiring of wading through waterlogged fields. Brad led a field meeting to Paines Cross Meadow SSSI where six species of Sphagnum were found in an enticingly signposted bog and Jacqui Hutson led a trip to Markstakes Common. The common is well recorded and Jacqui volunteers there every week often picking up new bryophyte records, but with the help of a large team of keen bryologists seven new taxa were added to the site list.

Then lockdown descended and we were confined to our local patches. Our gardens benefitted from the attention!

Jacqui found 25 different bryophytes in her garden in Plumpton Green including Fissidens exilis, a new record for her home tetrad.

Just a few common taxa in my back garden in central Brighton but the uncommon moss Syntrichia virescens was found in our communal garden on the unusual habitat of a felt shed roof. This moss, only recorded in 13 tetrads in Sussex, seems to be frequent on urban Elms in Brighton and Hove. Howard Matcham advised me to look in the ‘dog zone’ (after a good shower of rain is best for this), and this resulted in more records including one from a tree in Shoreham when I was able to venture further from home.

Howard’s garden in Strettington showed great diversity with 27 species found. These included Zygodon viridissimus var. stirtonii on a clay tile roof and Orthotrichum tenellum on Horse Chestnut. The latter is not a rare moss but, as well as leaf gemmae which are not common, this specimen had produced rhizoidal gemmae which have never been recorded on this species before.

Brad visited a friend’s garden in Crowborough and found Hennediella macrophylla and Scapania nemorosa and found a sandstone bank on the edge of East Grinstead supporting 21 different bryophyte species including the lettuce-like liverwort Fossombronia pusilla.

As restrictions eased, we ventured a little further, finding new records for well-recorded stomping grounds. One of Brad’s local tetrads now stands at 129 taxa with the addition of common Lawn Moss Rhytidiadelphus squarrosus. He also explored woodland near his home, one so steep and inaccessible that it had never been recorded for bryophytes or vascular plants before and found Large Bittercress, Cardamine amara as well as gill bryophytes.

Always intrepid, Dave Bangs found a marvellous hidden bog with thick mats of the thallose liverwort Riccardia chamaedryfolia and the less common Riccardia multifida alongside Handsome Woolywort, Trichocolea tomentella and a nice colony of Dicranella rufescens. David Newman sent in a clutch of good bryophyte records from gills and woodland around Ticehurst and Hurst Green.

The undercliff to the east of Brighton is popular with cyclists and runners getting their daily exercise but it was worth getting ahead of the crowds at dawn to find Aloina ambigua on the raised beach at Brighton Marina.

Golf courses were closed during lockdown and Hollingbury Golf Course on the outskirts of Brighton turned up a lovely micro community of mosses on exposed anthills including Enthosthodon fascicularis, not at all common in Sussex but coincidentally found at the same time by Phil Budd on a grassy sea wall on Thorney Island.

Waterhall Golf Course is now closed and is being rewilded, but anthills here hosted more common mosses including large quantities of Pleuridium subulatum. There was a scrap of Weissia controversa var. crispata on bare chalk and the fairways will be worth visiting again as the course naturalises.

Lockdown also had the benefit of forcing us to look at some specimens we may have collected in the past but hadn’t got around to identifying. Such desk bryology has also included intensive work by me and Brad, (but mostly Brad), on the collection from the Guermonprez herbarium at Portsmouth Museum. Comprising over 300 gatherings from the Bognor area from about 1890 to 1915, this ongoing work has turned up many new tetrad records for under-recorded parts of the county, as well as several rarer species not otherwise known from sites such as The Trundle, Lavant Down, Rewell Wood and Fairmile Bottom. The research has also enabled us to build a more nuanced picture of the practice of bryology at the end of the nineteenth century; not only has it been possible to build up a history of the making of the herbarium, but we have identified Harriet Guermonprez (1863–1917) as the first woman to collect mosses in Sussex.

The dry summer (and not much else in our diaries) meant that any rare rainy day that might revive parched bryophytes was followed by a scramble to get out into the field. It was hard to keep one step ahead of the rest of the world and sometimes on a trip to remote woodland would stumble across a gathering unable to party indoors, camping on beds of the lovely moss that we wanted to survey! However, most of the time we had the woods and fields to ourselves and could carry on solo recording unhindered.

At the end of August Jacqui and I met for a trip to Bodle Street Green, then in September we held a field meeting with six bryologists at Shermanbury. It was great to meet up with old friends in the autumn sun and despite parched conditions we managed to score a new county record. A tombstone in Shermanbury churchyard was smothered in Schistidium apocarpum. The common S. crassipilum is widespread throughout the country on hard calcareous surfaces but this, the second commonest Schistidium in Britain favours damp habitats and is only frequent in the west.

Then a group of five visited Bodiam Castle in October in perfect mossing conditions. The castle was unexplored bryologically and the castle and grounds proved to be superb hunting grounds with gloriously mossy castle walls, but the best find was Hedwigia ciliata var. ciliata growing on the clay tile roof of the second-hand bookshop. This attractive moss has not been seen in East Sussex for over 100 years.

Sadly, that was it for group forays in 2020 although Brad took a group of friends to Peppers Pond near Ashurst for some moss teaching and came across a huge colony of Aphanorhegma patens, an uncommon ephemeral moss of pond margins. We had seen a few plants at Shermanbury but nothing like this amount.

In the grounds of Bramber Castle I found Rhynchostegiella litorea on a veteran Ash tree and a month later, was seen again in old hedgerow on Church Lane, Newtimber. A small scruffy moss, often overshadowed by the showy mosses of old trees on the chalk, it has only been recorded in 7 tetrads in Sussex.

There was one more new county record to be made before the year was out. A mystery moss that I collected from a pondside meadow in Herstmonceux turned out to be Dicranella howei, accepted as a new county record for East Sussex. Then I found another small colony on the north-facing Downs at Bo-peep. As we look out for this it will probably turn out to be quite common in base-rich grassland.

All these new county records were found in tetrads with very few previous bryophyte records which demonstrates that even in a well surveyed county such as Sussex there are always new places worth exploring with the chance of making exciting discoveries. Two of the species, the Schistidium apocarcum and Dicranella howei, are only distinctive when viewed through the microscope so careful looking for subtle differences in the field is needed.

Slowly our tetrad map is turning green. This year we have added 33 more tetrads with 40 or more bryophyte records. Central Sussex is now solidly recorded, and we are making good progress on the interesting countryside around Henfield and Bramber when time and travel restrictions mean that we have not been able to get to the far corners of the county.

Many thanks to everyone who has contributed bryophyte records this year. All records, even of the most common species are valuable. We have missed meeting up with fellow bryologists in the field and we are always thrilled to hear about forays into the field and any records produced. Thanks as always to Tom Ottley for his continuing help and support.

You can read more about our forays on our blog at: https://sussexbryophytes.wordpress.com/. Looking forward to meeting up in the field before too long but in the meantime keep looking out for bryophytes and letting us know about your finds.