*1: Pendennis,
Falmouth, 1902, GBS
(RAMM) (Paton 1969a: 724).
*2: Near St Breward,
1906, RWS (TRU) (Paton 1969a:
724).
Grows as low lawns, patches, or scattered among
other low mosses. Notes on habitats in C&S are as follows.
Mainly a colonist of bare or partly bare, slightly acidic,
circumneutral or basic mineral soils, often those that are
compacted and sandy, gritty or gravelly. Typically occurs on
substrates that are not disturbed regularly, so not usually
found in arable fields (one record from sandy field left
fallow, one from edge of cereal stubble, one from a bulb
field). Its usual habitats are on paths, tracks and their
edges, soil heaps, a disused railway, gravel car parks,
lay-bys, quarries, very short grassland or pathways on
calcareous dunes, banks of china-clay spoil, old copper-mine
spoil (and on fine-grained 'lithosols' of unshaded mine-spoil
areas) and soil on 'hedges'. Also thin soil over mortar or
stone on top of old walls and over old concrete or in its
crevices; several records of it growing directly on old mortar
of wall-tops, twice in crevices of old tarmac, once at head of
shingle beach. Typically grows on free-draining substrates and
avoids those that are permanently wet. Sometimes on slopes
above sea-cliffs (found at least three times on sea-cliffs or
cliff tops and subject to salt spray). Usually grows where
unshaded, less often lightly shaded. Frequent associates
include Barbula
convoluta, Barbula
unguiculata, Bryum
dichotomum, Ceratodon purpureus,
Didymodon fallax,
Didymodon
insulanus, Didymodon tophaceus,
Phascum cuspidatum
var. cuspidatum; less often
Aloina aloides, Didymodon umbrosus, Lophozia ventricosa,
Microbryum
davallianum.
Rarely c.fr. [two records, Holywell in vc1, Goss
Moor in vc2]: capsules immature 5,
11.