Welsh Coastal Flora and Fauna

[pameladlloyd]

I have been researching the wildlife, both animal and plant, that might be found in Welsh coastal areas. In the process, I've come across some truly gorgeous photography. One of the best sites is A Picture of Gower.

Since I'm not interested in a specific location, but more in the general types of things that might be found on the coast (although I've mostly focused on the Gower peninsula), my current lists (which are in no particular order and I'm sure are very incomplete) include:


Sea Mammals

• seals and great seals


• bottle-nosed, common, and Risso dolphins

Things Found in Tidepools

• baby sole


• baby plaice


• weeverfish


• rays


• turbot


• brill


• barnacles


• crabs


• dog whelks


• kelp


• limpets


• sea anemones, including plumose anemones


• winkles


• wrack


• mussels


• starfish, including cushion starfish


• lobsters

Plants of the Sand Dunes and Salt Marshes

• sea spurge


• sea holly


• eel grass


• glasswort


• sea plantain

Birds

• kittiwakes (they look a bit like a gull, have a round head, and are white with dark gray or black wing tips


• choughs (a kind of crow)


• auks


• puffins


• shags


• fulmars


• oystercatchers


• plus, various "waders and ducks"

Freshwater River Denizens

• otters


• eels

Insects, Spiders and Other Creepy-Crawlies

• demoiselle (a kind of dragonfly)


• strand-line beetles


• "a recently discovered British spider named after Gower (Lasiargus gowerensis)" See reference at Gower Peninsula Holiday Guide: Insect Life


• bloody-nosed beetles (so named because, when frightened, they release a red substance that looks like blood)


• great green bush crickets

Misc Flowers, Plants, and Trees

• scarlet pimpernel


• pink thrift


• foxglove


• snowdrops (in January)


• Carline thistle


• Yew (tree)


• Ash (tree)


• cleavers, aka goosegrass


• greater stitchwort, aka pixie, due to its association with the creatures of faerie


• cowslip, aka buckles, key flower, Mayflower, paigles, palsywort, petty mulleins, plumrocks, fairycup, and more (Per Gower Peninsula Holiday Guide: Gower Plants: "The flowers are also supposed to be the keys which reveal and unlock fairy treasure."

See Gower Peninsula Holiday Guide: Gower Plants for information about most of these flowers.


Miscellaneous

• badgers

I think the most fun was the information on the "culinary delicacies" of Gower (which appear to be the kinds of simple, local foods people would have prepared in this environment):

Cockles are just one of many Gower's culinary delicacies: others are laverbread (cooked seaweed; delicious with cockles and oatmeal) sewin (sea trout) mushrooms (ceps and blewits) salt-marsh lamb, gulls' eggs, marsh samphire and shellfish....

Source: Gower - Outstanding Natural Beauty

For more information about laverbread, see the Wikipedia entry for Laverbread.

Comments

Trouble with lj-cuts

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

I'm having trouble with the cuts, which I've never tried to use before. I've seen entries that have multiple cuts, but this seems to be an all or nothing proposition here.

I welcome any comments or suggestions.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I like the idea of sea laver very much. There's a kind of lichen called rock tripe that grows on rocks around here that's edible--apparently they ate it at Valley Forge. I cooked some once; it wasn't bad.

Your LJ cuts look fine. It's true that once you expand an entry for one cut--or if you go to leave a comment, like I'm doing--you see what's behind all the cuts. The way LJ's set up, there's no way around that, unfortunately. But I think people skim things they're not interesting, and if you put things under cuts, then when people are browsing your friends list, then your entry isn't overly long (that's why I use cuts--to prevent my entries from taking up too much space).

Your lists are fascinating, anyway. When we were in England, I remember the kids chasing each other with goose grass.

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

Thank you Asakiyume; sorry to take so long to reply.

I was lucky enough to spend several months in Great Britain about twenty-five years ago. My first husband was in his forth year of medical school and the students were allowed to do their clinical rotations anywhere in the world (I'm sure there were some restrictions). Anyway, we originally planned to spend the entire school year there, but when I discovered I was pregnant and due in the early fall, we postponed our trip. So, my son was born in "the states" and we arrived two days before Christmas with a four month old infant. No running around, but a whole lot of carrying--thank goodness for Snugli sacks.

We spent a month in London, three in Cambridge, and one in Edinburgh, which was my favorite of the three cities. We also managed a couple of weekend getaways, one that took us across England through Oxford and on into Wales, the other following the firths of Scotland up to the Isle of Skye. There was an amazing contrast between England, Scotland, and Wales, even through they are all crowed together on an island far smaller than the state of Texas in which I grew up. England was (at least in the parts through which we traveled) tame and neat, with even the little patches of woods having been planted in rows. Crossing over the mountains into Wales, we found ourselves suddenly in a wild place. The mountains were craggy and covered with a low ground cover that was very much not-grass. There were mountain ponies running wild and uncared for. Our trip across Scotland was also memorable.

I've wanted to go back and spend more time in both Wales and Scotland. Wales in particular draws me, due to my Welsh ancestry (Lloyd is a Welsh name).

four-month old infant

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

We did the opposite thing--twice we had babies overseas (once in England... which isn't overseas for my husband but is for me--and once in Japan) and both times we came back to the states when the babies were 4 months old!

And speaking of snuglies, I remember at the airport when we were coming back from Japan--this was at Chicago, I guess--I was carrying that baby in a sling, and a woman came up to me and asked if I was just back from somewhere in Africa and remarked on how women carried babies there... she had spent time in Africa (she was a caucasian American)... you could tell she missed it...

I love your description of Wales. I'd love to go there one day.

Re: four-month old infant

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

These posts have inspired me to drag out my old photo album and scan a few pictures in.

I'm having difficulty figuring out how to put them in this comment, so I'll use the post to journal feature. See you there! 8)

Re: four-month old infant

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

What a lovely post it is! The delight just transmits right across the Internet.

(I love the Internet, for this!)

[sianikatt.livejournal.com]

Many thanks for visiting my blog, A Picture of Gower. I appreciate the kind comments and the link.

If you need any more info about the local flora and fauna, check out http://www.welcometogower.co.uk. I know Chris, the author of that site. He's a very knowledgeable guy and has a lot of useful flora and fauna info there. His wife, Stella, also has a lot of useful info on her site, http://www.explore-gower.co.uk/, which is temporarily down for maintenance. I also have some pics of local flora and fauna on my main blog, http://sianiworld.co.uk. As it's a big blog, I'd be happy to hunt down the relevant post URLs for you.

Once again, many thanks. It's nice to meet you here in cyberspace.

Siani.

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

You're welcome, and thank you, Siani! I've just spent a couple of hours reading a few of Chris' posts about the myths and legends of Gower. Fascinating, wonderful stuff.

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

I've been wandering around Chris' site and found the following post: Gower Wildlife (http://www.welcometogower.co.uk/search/label/Wildlife), which not only describes the wildlife under categories similar to mine, but has pictures! I highly recommend the entire site, btw, to anyone interested in the folklore of the area, as well as for the info on flora and fauna that Sianikatt mentioned.