*1: Trungle Moor near
Paul, 1861, WC (OXF) (Paton 1969a:
709).
*2: Helman Tor, 1882,
RVT (TRU) (Paton 1969a:
709).
The most widespread Sphagnum and often
common, tolerating variety of mesotrophic habitats but local
and mainly in pools in the more oligotrophic mires.
Characteristic of wet places on heathland with short
vegetation, where it is often an early colonist on bare peat
following fires or heavy grazing, but where like other sphagna
it tends to be excluded as ungrazed or unburnt vegetation
becomes tall, persisting longest along tracks or pathways and
in other more open areas. Also in a variety of other wet,
base-deficient sites including mires (on damp often flushed
surfaces or in shallow pools), flushes (including those above
and occasionally on sea-cliffs), wet pastures with Juncus effusus, wet
carrs of Grey Willow, ditches, acidic flushes, trackside
ditches, edge of a reservoir and edges of soft-water pools and
streams (where often shallowly submerged). Most often in
unshaded places, but tolerates moderate shade inside
degenerating mire (e.g. at base of tall Molinia caerulea
tussocks), Grey Willow carrs, deciduous woodlands or conifer
plantations. Substrates are more or less acidic and usually of
wet peat or other humic materials, but it will occur among
rocks or on mineral soils in more or less permanently wet
sites. Several records from in or near old (and not so old)
stone and china clay quarries, flushes below china-clay spoil
tips and one from hollows among old metalliferous-mine spoil.
Found in quantity floating in stream north of Crow's Nest,
with loose Scapania
undulata, both evidently washed downstream following heavy
rain. Common associates on heathland include Aulacomnium palustre,
Calluna vulgaris,
Juncus effusus, Molinia caerulea, Ulex gallii; more
local associates there or in mires and pools may include Aulacomnium palustre,
Straminergon
stramineum, Sphagnum palustre, Sphagnum squarrosum,
Sphagnum subnitens,
Sarmentypnum
exannulatum; small Carex spp., Eleogiton fluitans, Erica ciliaris, Eriophorum
angustifolium,
Hydrocotyle vulgaris, Hypericum elodes, Glyceria spp., Juncus bulbosus, J. effusus, Potentilla palustris
and Schoenus
nigricans.
Occasionally c.fr.: capsules dehiscing
8.
