Botanising in a cemetery

For some, botanising in a cemetery on a Sunday morning in early Spring may seem a touch bazaar but burial grounds can be rich pickings for an inquisitive naturalist. The interest in such sites lies within the blend of remnant semi improved grassland, parkland type trees and the variety of introduced memorial plants that have naturalised this type of setting. 

Panteg Cemetery on the outskirts of Pontypool is large and old. It still accepts burials but for a naturalist its the aged parts that keep the attention the most. Primroses frequent grave surfaces and have colonised extensively throughout the cemetery. A large patch of the non-native three-cornered leek occurs under a tree with individual outlying plants some distance away suggesting that it won't be too long before it become more widespread. As its early Spring some small stands of snowdrops were in flower. Another grave was covered in the winter flowering sowbread. Red valerian was widespread with many displaying evidence of the gall Trioza centranthi.

There was certainly enough on show to whet the appetite of a naturalist and diary mark further visits during the coming Spring and Summer.

 

Three-cornered Leek (Allium triquetrum)

Abraham-issac-jacob (Trachystemon orientalis)

Wood Surge (Euphorbia amygdaloides)

Snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis)

Sowbread (Cyclamen hederifolium)

Red Valerian (Centranthus ruber) with leaf roll (Trioza centranthi)

 

I never tire of this landscape

It was the end of February, the sun was spring-like but the wind bracing as I stood alone on the highest point of Canada Tips, Blaenavon. Looking east towards the Keepers Pond, its car park was popular and a single wild swimmer laboured. Beyond and on the horizon I could see the Foxhunter car park and from it a couple of groups of excited school children complete with walking poles and maps in waterproof covers emerged. Later a mini-bus resplendent in the Cranbourne School crest arrived to collect the returning walkers. 

I moved to seek refuge from the wind, just in time to view five unlicensed scramblers pick their way between the spoil tips only to cross the Abergavenny Road and motor in characteristic lawless style along the road to the Foxhunter car park then out of sight. The bikers had left their mark on the landscape cutting through the peat in a damaging care free manner. As I paused to take some photographs of the abuse laid bare in front for me a skylark climbed in song, but not quite full summer song, and then another and another. 

Striding through the straw coloured molina I was startled by a red grouse that took off low over the upland vegetation and then down, surely to hunker down out of the keen wind. An old industrial reservoir breached long ago and purged of most of its water held sufficient to generate some interest. And so it proved my first clumps of frog spawn of the season were visible. On my return I peered rather gingerly into the crevices of a weathering sandstone outcrop to view a number of oak fern.