Anticipating some botanising later ...

I'm writing this post in odd moments between doing lab stuff - it's Saturday afternoon, so I don't have to be working all the time :o)

I'm meant to be doing a survey of the bryophytes in Bagley Wood (a large area of woodland to the southwest of Oxford owned by St. John's College) . That is to say that I was encouraged to embark on this project, obtained permission, did a bit and then ignored it for a long time. After finishing in the lab today I hope to get down there for the first time in ages. I've noticed that my permit is up for renewal in November and in order to have it renewed I think I'll need to be able to produce some data!

Bagley is quite an interesting place. It's mentioned by Arnold in The Scholar Gypsy:

In autumn, on the skirts of Bagley Wood—
Where most the gypsies by the turf-edged way
Pitch their smoked tents, and every bush you see
With scarlet patches tagged and shreds of grey

(I like Arnold's work, but don't think I understand very much of it!)

For a long time the Oxford Forestry Professorship was associated with St. John's and in consequence the whole wood is a massive collection of forestry experiments. Every 100 yards or so, the trees change completely! An ideal situation for high bryodiversity and therefore a lot of fun for a bryologist. I would be happy to describe myself as an amateur pteridologist, since I can identify a good chunk of the British fern flora, however the title of 'amateur bryologist' can't really be applied to me, since I'm still at a very basic level with my mosses. I am able to execute the survey, though, with the help of some good keys. I use mainly Watson, but also have Smith on hand for a more detailed desciption of species, especially those that are only sparsely described (and in smaller type too) in Watson. I also have ex-Library copies of the 3-volume Atlas of British Bryophytes (my best value book buy ever @ £3 total!).

Doing a full transect-method/ quadrant weilding survey is beyond my expertise and time available, and previous records are constituted by a checklist, so that is what I'm going to aim for. I've divided the wood up into areas and am hoping to produce a checklist of species for each area (and perhaps sub-divide each area to smaller sectors), so as to produce an overall checklist for the whole wood with some element of distribution data. Today I hope to do a first sweep of an area I haven't looked at before. Each area will need several visits because mosses are small enough to be easily missed, plus some species will be more identifiable (e.g. bearing capsules) at different times of the year.

I'm also taking my camera and sketchbook. I haven't done any photography or sketching for ages and I'd like to get back into it at some point. I'd also like to work on my watercolour technique, but I think that will have to wait until after I've written-up my D.Phil.

All in all, I'm quite excited about going today, which is good since my enthusiasm for the whole project has been low for so long. Of course the fieldwork will need to be backed up by a lot of microscope work tomorrow in order to get identifications of all the specimens I collect today. The temptation is always to start as soon as you get them home, but I think an hour of the Calvin biography that I'm reading followed by an early night is much more in order. Perhaps I could fit in an hour first thing tomorrow before church.