News and Views February 2003 home.
Picture of the countryside. Love on the Rocks
Botanists from the University of Bradford, the Natural History Museum and English Nature have discovered the rare Nowell's limestone moss (Zygodon gracilis) fruiting for the first known time since 1866, giving them hope for the future recovery of one of the world's most enigmatic plants.
Until this discovery Nowell's limestone moss was thought to exist only on two old sections of dry-stone wall in the Yorkshire Dales and had joined the endangered species list. It was last seen reproducing in 1866 by John Nowell, a well-known amateur botanist of the day who discovered and named the moss.
On a mission to find and document the last remaining patches of the species in the Dales, Dr Alistair Headley, from the University's Department of Geographical and Environmental Science and Dr Fred Rumsey, UK Plant Diversity Researcher at the Natural History Museum, found not only the moss but also the reason for its near extinction.
Moss. Alistair said: "It is difficult at the best of times to reproduce sexually on a drystone wall, but when your nearest partner is many kilometres away on a different wall it is impossible to get it together.
"Although the moss has gone from many of its nineteenth century locations it has been rewarding to find some large populations in new locations near to Pen-y-Ghent. It has been a great relief to find at least one cushion where the moss has got both males and females together and it is fruiting. We have sexed over 500 cushions to find the overwhelming majority to be female, but finding that the two sexes are separated by several kilometres has enabled us to pinpoint one of the reasons for its rarity and decline over the last 100 years or so."
This work will now enable the scientists to help restore extinct populations and reverse the decline of this obscure, but internationally important population.
10 February 2002
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