South House Pavement

Saturday 23^rd June 2018

Leader: Neil Barrett

The YWT nature reserve at South House Pavement is reached via a grassy slope to the west of Borrins Farm. While the fields were heavily grazed by cattle, inside the fenced reserve the plants had been allowed to flourish, albeit somewhat stressed by the very warm and dry late spring this year. Limestone pavement was interspersed with grassland, both acid and alkaline influences readily apparent when looking at the flora. We had to pick our way carefully from clint to clint, some of the grykes exceeding two metres in depth. I hadn’t ever been on a limestone pavement where so many of the clints were topped by loose boulders, which rocked alarmingly when stepped on.

Peeping out from the grykes were patches of bloody crane’s-bill and a few wood crane’s-bill flowers remained in the grassy areas. We scratched our heads over at least three different hawkweeds, one with unusually large flowers, another with spotted leaves and a third which we had to key out to distinguish it from the hawk’s-beard which it resembled at first sight. The leaves of lily-of-the-valley remained to store up nutrients for next year but the flowers had gone.

Enjoying moisture, shelter and shade in the grykes were several ferns, including green spleenwort, as well as the more abundant maidenhair spleenwort. The fresh green fronds of the attractive hard shield-fern were everywhere and brittle bladder-fern was also dotted around. A particularly keen pair of eyes spotted limestone fern, its pinnae crowded towards the broad ends of the fronds. Also present was hart’s-tongue but someone’s quest for lemon-scented fern was to prove fruitless.

In the grassy areas, we found several impressive stands of melancholy thistle, just about at its best, as well as the more common marsh and spear thistles and, unfortunately, creeping thistle. Among the sedges, glaucous sedge was most common, sometimes growing next to carnation sedge, illustrating the mosaic of soils present on the reserve. Flea sedge was also seen. As at Grass Wood, a fortnight earlier, the drooping culms of mountain melick stood out in a couple of places.

Along the western (upper) edge of the reserve, eared willow was present, while creeping willow was found in the centre of this narrow (60 metres) and long (800m) reserve. A few acid pockets contained bilberry, while other areas featured hazel, buckthorn and ash. Some of the more mature examples of the latter were showing signs of disease, presumably caused by the rapidly-spreading Hymenoscyphus fraxineus (formerly Chalara fraxinea) fungus. Ironically, the non-native sycamore was found in several places and there was also rowan (mountain ash) and wych elm.

Only two members of the orchid family were seen, namely common twayblade and a few desiccated stems of early purple orchid. A solitary native bluebell was still in flower two days after the summer solstice, as was a single example of sanicle, in the relative cold and dark of a gryke. Slender stems of small scabious looked about to flower, taking the baton from rue-leaved saxifrage, the flowers of which were long gone. The less common white form of common milkwort was seen , along with the more common blue form. A few stems of hare’s-tail cottongrass rounded off an easily-paced visit to the reserve.

Some of our group then went on to a nearby wild flower meadow, where greater butterfly-orchid was the star attraction. As an additional bonus, while we enjoyed the species-rich grassy areas and nearby stream, the southbound steam-hauled Cumbrian Mountain Express came by to round off a memorable day in the Dales.

Text by Andrew

Photographs by Neil