Drumsticks

After dropping Pete at the JTAC meeting, I had a couple of hours of mossy heaven mooching round Holme Fen NNR. After a night of heavy rain the birch trees were shrouded in raindrops, a million scintillating  diamonds, making the reserve more magical than it always is. I headed for my favourite part of the fen, primeval-feeling birch forest with many huge shuttlecock-shaped scaly male-ferns, stands of razor-edged saw-sedge and bushes of deliciously scented bog myrtle. 

I spent ages looking closely at the many rotting logs, and was pleased  to find a wonderful tuft of the appropriately named drumsticks, Aulacomnium androgynum whose shoots often terminate in an elongated stalk with a ball of gemmae at the top. I also found a small clump of Red-stemmed Feather-moss Pleurozium schreberi (see extra), which I've not seen at the site before. A very common species of acid habitats, it's decidedly rare in Cambridgeshire, which mostly has calcareous soils.