Newsletter Cylchlythyr

THE FRIENDS OF TREBORTH BOTANIC GARDEN

CYFEILLION GARDD FOTANEG TREBORTH

NEWSLETTER CYLCHLYTHYR

Number / Rhif 64 January/Ionawr 2019

Fig. 1. Smaller bee boles with small straw skep [p. 5].

Fig 2. Ulva intestinalis on the shore of Treborth Botanic Garden [p. 15]

COMMITTEE

Sarah Edgar ([email protected]) Chair Angela Thompson ([email protected]) Vice Chair, Joint Membership Sec Cath Dixon Treasurer Natalie Chivers ([email protected]) Curator Rosie Kressman ([email protected]) Horticulturist Cherry Bartlett ([email protected]) Events Secretary Teri Shaw Joint Membership Sec Dr John Gorham Committee Member Dr David Shaw Committee Member Tom Cockbill Committee Member Dr Ann Illsley Committee Member Dr James Stroud Committee Member Jen Towill Committee Member Tom Morrisey STAG Representative

Newsletter Team

John Gorham (layout, photos) Grace Gibson (adverts, articles) Angela Thompson email as above (commissioning articles, planning, editing)

Cover Photos:

Front:: Treborth trees in Winter [p. 13] © Rosie Kressman

Back: (top) Llyn Clywedog panorama [p. 11] © Jon Keymer (bottom) Panorama in Torres del Paine, Chile [p. 24] © Richard Birch

Unless otherwise stated, all contributions to the newsletter are copyright of the author.

For more information about The Friends of Treborth Botanic Garden, please visit our website: www.friendsoftreborthbotanicgarden.org or write to: The Chair, Friends of Treborth Botanic Garden, Treborth, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2RQ, UK

Issue No. 64 January 2019

Contents

Chair’s Introduction, January 2019 3

Curator’s Report: September— December 2018 6

A day in the Life of a Treborth Volunteer Gardener 8

Ornamental Plants: Our Future Invaders? 9

A Tour de Wales 11

Surviving Winter…...In the Garden 13

The Marine Botany of the Shoreline at Treborth Botanic Garden 15

Two European Gardens: Puerto de la Cruz Botanic Gardens (Tenerife) And Vallon du Stang Alar, Brest (Brittany) 17

An Update on the Life and Story of Your Slug-Obsessed 2016 Intern 23

Into Chile: A Journey in Two Parts—Part 2 24

The Tea Horse Road 28

New Zealand: Bike, Boots, Beeches and Beaches 35

If possible, please access the online version of the Newsletter to save paper and printing costs, and tell Angela Thompson ([email protected]) that you do not require a printed copy.

Chair’s Introduction, January 2019

Sarah Edgar

We make no apologies for taking you away from north Wales for a while with this newsletter. Our members have been travelling the world (including Wales) in 2018: from China to Chile, from Tenerife to Tenby, and from Brittany to the Blue Lake in New Zealand. They share their botanising, birding and other adventures with you. Jen Towill writes about cycling and walking in the South Island of New Zealand a year ago where she experienced beautiful woodlands, stunning views – and sand flies. Richard Birch continues his travels in Chile, this time in the far south; amongst the many interesting plants he saw there was the Magellanic sedge, which I was fascinated to learn has managed to get itself (unaided by human intervention) over here to the Migneint.

You will have heard about the Silk Road, but were you aware of the Tea Horse Road from China to Tibet and then to India? John Gorham writes about the history of this trade route and his travels there. Nearer to home, you will be tempted to visit the gardens of Tenerife and Brest after reading Angela Thompson’s article. You may also be tempted to get out your bicycle next summer and follow Jon Keymer’s route through Wales down to Llanelli (or perhaps, like me, you will be happy just to read about it – there really is no way to avoid those mountains!).

For news of what is going on at Treborth, read Natalie Chivers’ report about the many events - and challenging weather conditions - that have been occurring in the Garden. Rosie Kressman explains how Treborth plants demonstrate adaptabil- ity to their environment. And what do our volunteers do in the Garden? See Chris Howard’s article to find out what she gets up to on a Wednesday.

One of the many pleasures about coming to Treborth is meeting the students who are carrying out research work, and also hearing about how they are taking their interests on to further research elsewhere. Kerry McDonald did a project at Treborth about the control of slugs (a subject close to many of our hearts) through parasites and is now starting a PhD in Liverpool John Moores University on that subject. Tomos Jones has worked at Treborth for several years, where of course he was looking after many non-native species, and he is now doing a PhD at Reading University on how increased temperatures could turn what are currently well-behaved non-native species into invasive weeds. Treborth is fortunate in having a marine boundary, and if you have ever ventured down to the shoreline you will have seen the variety of seaweeds there, and you can read about these in the report of the survey work undertaken by Beth Scrutton and David Cheshire-Beeson.

Finally, please can I make an appeal to anyone who has a bit of greenhouse space, or a good bright window-sill, to grow a few plants for our plant sales? One of our growers is not able to do it next year, and, even with the new poly tunnel we do not have the space at Treborth to grow the range of seedlings, particularly vegetables, that are such an important feature of our plant sales. We will provide all the seeds, compost, pots etc, and advice, if you need it, on how to sow and look after them. If you want to offer, or just have a (no commitment) chat about what it involves, please contact us.

News in Brief

Donations

The following people have very generously donated funds to the Friends for the benefit of the Garden: Jenny Rickards and John Evans (£528 from plant sales at NGS Open Day July 18), Diana Boaler, Helen Hughes, Hazel Cave, Brian Ayers, John and Sian Turner, Marga- ret Walton, Tim Clark, Barrie Buels, Jane Rees, Sheila Hargreaves, Mr and Mrs M Stammers, and David Hill and Vanessa Griffiths.

Natural Plant Dyes, Lichens and Yeasts (with thanks to Hilary Miller)

Many plant-derived natural dyes (from roots, berries, bark, leaves, wood and other biological sources such as fungi) have been used to colour wool, cotton and other textiles for centuries – many shades of red, orange, yellow, brown, blue, purple and green are possible. Synthetic dyes were not developed until the mid-19th century. Many people today still utilise these natural dyes in traditional processes, and the Gwynedd Guild of Spinners, Weavers and Dyers organises workshops at Treborth on their use.

Some lichens are also used in dyeing. A lichen is not a single organism; it is composed of a single type of fungus, usually belonging to the Ascomycetes group, and algae and/or cyanobacteria living together for mutual benefit. Yeasts are also fungi, usually of the Basidiomycetes group, and they have, for the first time, recently been found in some large leafy and branching ascomycete lichens, but their presence there is not obvious. Natural dyes do not always produce the expected colour, and in the case of lichens that may contain yeasts, does this help to explain the different dyeing properties of lichens that look the same but are in fact biologically different? Perhaps the ‘wrong’ type has been collected…

Bee Boles (continued…)

Following the article in the September 18 issue of the newsletter about the bee boles at Adlington Hall, Friends of Treborth, Fred and Alison Whowell, got in touch with Treborth to tell us about the 2 sets of bee boles in the walls of their old farmhouse. I contacted Fred and went to have a look. Their house is on the outskirts of Bangor and was built in the mid-1700s. One set of boles are about 2.5 m from ground level in an old wall that was possibly once an exterior wall to an out-building (Figure 3). There are 5 of them, each about 30 cm². The 3 boles in the other row were smaller and built into an old external wall near the house about 1 m from the ground; one contained a very small traditional straw skep (Figure 1). A rather nice touch, I thought…

Fred Whowell

Since writing my small piece on the bee boles at Fred’s farmhouse, Nigel Brown has informed us that Fred sadly died at the age of 91 early in December. He and his wife Alison had been long-time members of the Friends and were very supportive when the Garden was seriously under threat in the past. We send our sincere con- dolences to Alison and the family.

Owing to printing deadlines, we are unable to provide more details in this issue of the newsletter but Nigel plans to write an appreciation of Fred's support for Treborth in the May 2019 issue.

Angela Thompson

Fig. 3. Larger bee boles at the Whowell farmhouse. [p. 5].

Curator’s Report: September – December 2018 Natalie Chivers As the year draws to a close, I am grateful for the resilience of the Garden. I am writing this as the wind is whistling through the building and the leaves are swirling around in a vortex, fighting to get through the door. We have battled gale-force winds that have torn through the greenhouses, enjoyed an indoor swimming pool for a week that erupted on the lab floor, and transformed the little, green truck into a fire engine to water the borders during the summer drought. Yet the garden is looking better than ever! I put that down to exceptional hard work, commitment and a good dose of humour from everyone who helps us here at Treborth.

September saw a very successful open garden event for the National Garden Scheme. Our autumn plant sale is always a smaller affair, so it was exciting to offer glasshouse Q&A’s and a bumper shop full of preserves, crafts and of course the famous cakes! We saw lots of new faces as well as many regulars which is a positive sign that our publicity is working, and that the NGS open garden events are as popular as ever.

No sooner had the NGS day finished, we were on to prepping for the next event. With its combination of lawned gardens, specimen trees and a variety of woodland ecosystems, the Botanic Garden hosts a wealth of fungal diversity. Led by Nigel Brown and Charles Aron, a remarkable 177 species were recorded by our forayers with incredible fruiting bodies in all shapes, sizes and colours. After the foray, Nigel and Charles collated the species list and I have thoroughly enjoyed finding the fantastically enigmatic vernacular names for them, including the carnival candy slime mould, bitter poisonpie and the laughing cap.

We have been working really hard to improve the interpretation at the Garden and our efforts are paying off. Over the next few months, we will have new information panels for the meadow plots and butterfly border, plant profiles for the Chinese Garden and engraved labels for the specimen trees across the site. We will also have a site map on the front of the building and a new garden leaflet. I want to thank everyone who has been involved in our interpretive process; it connects the Garden to visitors, helps to develop new audiences, inspires people and makes the collections meaningful.

Our botanical seminars are another way we interpret information outside the Garden, and we have enjoyed learning about the wonder of waxcaps, GPS backpacks for bees and the extreme habitat that is Welsh tundra this semester. Thanks to all our speakers, volunteers and STAG for helping to organise such interesting talks.

We have been lucky this term with five work parties at the Garden. STAG and BFSA joined forces with Natural Resources Wales this autumn to plant a new hedge around the Rhizotron and 6000 spring and autumn bulbs around the site. The teams also pruned some of our large border shrubs and even helped to erect and paint the new STAG shed for their BBQ and tools. The bonfires were hot and the lunches delicious as ever!

We have secured five more student internships for the New Year as part of the Bangor Employability Award to further develop the Garden; woodland management, photography and archiving, horticulture, biodiversity management and discovering heritage assets. We are extremely grateful to the Careers and Employability Department for supporting and investing in the Garden and providing students with paid work experience.

We have also been working with the new combined School of Natural Sciences, providing undergraduate and postgraduate workshops, botanical, ornithological and entomological field courses and dissertation inspiration.

Our relationship with our partner garden, the National Botanic Garden of Wales (NBGW) continues to grow and were lucky enough to be a part of aseed collecting trip to the Great Orme with propagating horticulturist Carly Green and staff from the Millennium Seed Bank. We are developing the base-rich end of the rock garden, to include limestone grassland and pavement species from the outcrop. Although it was too late in the season for most things, we managed to collect both species of rock rose, some wild thyme, carline thistle and mouse-ear. Unsurprisingly, the most diverse area of the Orme was within a fenced enclosure, a good opportunity to talk about the effects that grazing can have on plants.

We close the year with a good dose of building maintenance – jet washing, pruning and re-insulating the glasshouses improves light levels, controls pests and diseases and creates some well-needed space for the upcoming growing season. The University Property and Campus Services have also invested in new dual-fuel boilers for the Garden, which have already improved our fuel efficiency and security.

Thank you to you all for another fantastic year!

A Day in the Life of a Treborth Volunteer Gardener

Chris Howard

I am able to walk to Treborth so start off between 09.30 and 09.45 am. When I get to Treborth I look on the white board just opposite the Tropical House to see what needs to be done.

If I don't like any of the jobs (my back does not allow me to do digging or raking), I check out the Temperate House where I have worked on and off ever since I started volunteering under the tutelage of Pauline Perry. She was quite a strict task-master but that was OK because I needed guidance for pruning, transplanting, weeding and most other jobs around the Garden. Think what you have to do in your garden and that is what happens at Treborth - except there is more of it.

There are several designated beds (eg the South African bed, the New Zealand bed, the grasses' bed, the butterfly border) and each needs a different approach. Sometimes another volunteer or two can help with my job, rather than do something else, which means there is someone to chat to, and the time seems to go quite quickly.

I have done pretty well every sort of job and worked in every area in the Garden. I started about 10 years ago and have never looked back. I'm sorry that I can't dig and rake any more but there are plenty of younger ones who can, as I could when I first started. At this time of year (October), leaves need raking every week, and drains and gutters need clearing. We have designated composting areas for leaves and for other plants, as well as grass bins after mowing (another regular and important job). The wild flower meadows have finished seeding so they can be mown as well, ready for next year, when the stakes and ropes are again employed in separating those areas from the lawns. We stop for a cuppa around 11.00/11.15 am and stop for lunch about 12.45/1.00 pm. You can come and go as you please and there is no clocking-off time. Some people come in later and start their jobs and stop when it's lunch time.

The biggest job at this time of the year (apart from leaves) is planting the hundreds of bulbs that are either put in pots round the welcome area or planted out in the grounds - that's what Jane and I were doing last week down by the Old Pond. I'm not trying to tell my granny how to suck eggs, but whatever work is done now will show benefits for the spring, summer and autumn next year. The area around the Cool House is still looking stunning because it has been looked after throughout the year, with dead-heading and staking for instance. If it's raining then

there is usually plenty to do in the glasshouses: pruning, weeding and transplanting etc.

One of the star attractions at Treborth is The Chinese Garden, which needs quite a lot of maintenance until the various plants grow, but we can do the work together which makes the time go quicker. It has proved its worth after a huge amount of preparing and planting work which is on-going.

I look forward to my Wednesdays and miss it when I'm away. I have made new friends and feel as though I am making such a positive contribution to Treborth and therefore the locality of Bangor. If you would like to try it, come along and see how you like it.

Ornamental Plants: Our Future Invaders?

Tomos Jones

I started my PhD at the University of Reading in September 2017, after my final summer working at Treborth as one of the Friends’ seasonal gardeners. This is a brief introduction to my research. The project is in collaboration with the RHS, building on their ‘Gardening in a Changing Climate’ report published in 2017.

I define an ornamental plant as a non-native plant that has been introduced intentionally for horticulture. They're important for wildlife and increase biodiversity by providing ecosystem services such as resources for pollinators. This is particularly true in urban areas. Most ornamental plants have not escaped ‘beyond the garden fence’ – ie naturalised in the wider environment – and only a relatively small number of these have a detrimental ecological impact. These are termed invasive.

However, climate change has the potential to facilitate naturalisation and/or invasion of species that have not previously been problematic. This is referred to as an ‘invasion debt’. I’m investigating this ‘invasion debt’ with both citizen science and species distribution modelling.

Gardeners can be the first to observe ornamental plants showing ‘invasive characteristics’ within gardens. For this reason, I had an online survey asking gardeners in Britain and Ireland to identify which ornamental plants are taking over or invading their gardens. This survey was open until the end of 2018, and I thank 9

those of you who participated. This approach – of asking gardeners - has the potential to identify problematic plants early in the naturalisation-invasion process. This is widely regarded to be both ecologically and economically preferable to having to manage plants which have already become invasive.

One example is Selaginella kraussiana (Kunze) A. Braun. Originally from central Africa, this clubmoss was introduced to cultivation in 1878 and is “often an abundant weed in shady corners of greenhouses” (Preston et al., 2002). It was as a lush green carpet under the benches in the Orchid House at Treborth that I first came across this plant. It was first recorded in the wild in 1908 in west Cornwall and has since spread slowly, but still only found locally naturalised. It is plants such as this which might naturalise further – or become invasive – in a changing climate. To measure this naturalisation and/or invasive potential, the plants from the survey are being investigated further with species distribution modelling. This can project probabilities of occurrence or identify climatic suitability for the future.

I hope to write a future article for the FTBG Newsletter with a summary of the results from the survey. In the meantime, if you’re interested in the project, you’re welcome to contact me on twitter: @TomosJones92, or email: [email protected])

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda!

Reference:

Preston, C.D., Pearman, D.A. and Dines, T.D., 2002. New Atlas of the British and Irish Flora. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fig. 4. Selaginella kraussiana. [p. 9]

A Tour de Wales

Jon Keymer

A window of time in early August evoked the desire to once more hit the road and discover places new. It was time to dust down the tent and sleeping bag, dig out my pocket road map of Wales and load up the trusty tourer with everything needed for a five-day trip.

Setting off mid-morning on an overcast Thursday, I followed the familiar Lon Eifion bike path that cuts a straight and, crucially, flat path from Caernarfon to the outskirts of Criccieth. After pausing briefly to enjoy a steam train’s arrival at Porthmadog cob, I took a rather longer timeout at my favourite spot of all, Portmeirion, for a meditative beer by the estuary. Revived in body and mind, it was onward along the coastal main road via Harlech and south to a Barmouth campsite that was well-appointed with a pizza restaurant and panoramic view of the sea.

Day two began with the crossing of all 699 metres of the Barmouth viaduct, the thrill of which carried me forward to Dolgellau and an excellent breakfast at the Hen Efail café (Old Epic). The route to Machynlleth involved the standard cyclist’s dilemma: whether to follow the less exciting but hassle-free main road or the more intrepid single-track lane over the hills? Despite the cost in time of the latter, the promise of views and proximity to nature not afforded the road user saw me leaving the A487 and heading up a steep and rugged track that passes over Aberllefeni slate quarry and finally descends alongside Afon Dulas until Gwynedd becomes Powys and the Dulas becomes the Dovey.

Relief at leaving behind Snowdonia coupled with an ignorance of mid-Walian geology meant I was in for a shock as the sharp Cambrian gradients kicked in south of Machynlleth. Sadly, as I crested the large hill above Dylife, thick mist and mizzle had descended and visibility was down to less than 50 metres thus preventing any possibility to appreciate one of the finest views in Wales, that of Dylife Gorge. However, an hour later I arrived at the awesome sight of the vast Llyn Clywedog (back cover), conditions had cleared and I was able to dry out as the summer’s warmth returned. Nevertheless, the riding became no easier; either side of Llanidloes, the road profile resembled one of Treborth’s bow saws. On finally reaching the ancient but still inhabited lead mining centre of Cwmystwyth, I felt a surge of relief knowing once more where I was. The previous two hours had involved travelling cautiously along a pockmarked farmer’s track over a very large hill marking the border with Ceredigion where, apart from a nearby wind farm and the regular inconvenience of steel gates, there had been little evidence of human existence.

The following morning proved a lot more convivial as it featured smoothly surfaced roads across gently rolling countryside with stunning views over sunlit farmland that stretched away as far as the Brecon Beacons to the south-west. Successfully evading the legendary ‘Beast of Bont’, the notorious sheep mutilator of Pontrhydfendigaid, and approaching Tregaron, I became fascinated by the increasingly regular overhead presence of another noted local attraction - red kites. One in particular distracted me such that I veered leftwards off the road and onto the verge, fortunately ending up scraping along a hawthorn hedge rather than wrapped around a large tree. A quick brush-down and lunch in Lampeter was followed by an afternoon riding alongside Afon Teifi, as I traced the border between Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire. A riverside pub garden in Pontwelly provided the dual joy of a beer in the sun while watching brave youngsters mastering the skill of slalom canoeing. From Newcastle Emlyn, it was on to Aberteifi (Cardigan) for pizza and beer at a super spot across the Teifi from the castle before making camp for the night at Llwyngwair Manor near Newport (not that one!).

Day four, a gloriously sunny Sunday, was spent dodging day-trippers and cycling along the bucolic, Pembrokeshire coastal road (my old adversary turned friend, the A487): through Fishguard and its pretty lower harbour, on to St Davids pausing only for a lunchtime oggie, and then on past Solva and Newgale Beach. After struggling to find a direct route through Haverfordwest, my senses were soon in for another treat with the Cleddau bridge that towers over Milford Haven waterway. Ticking off yet another castle – Pembroke this time, birthplace of the first Tudor king, Henry VII – the day’s exertions ended upon arrival at a tranquil campsite near the attractive village of Lamphey. A near-perfect day ended with the unexpected pleasure of exploring the magnificent ruins of the Bishop’s Palace, built by Henry de Gower in the early 1300s.

I had decided that Llanelli would mark the endpoint from which to take the train home. This demanded one long, remaining day in the saddle. The pressing schedule didn’t, though, prevent me taking time in the morning to explore the popular attractions of Manorbier and Tenby. There was an opporunity to stock up with produce from a terrific Tenby fudge shop that would keep my energy levels high for the remainder of the journey. A splendid coastal path northward from Tenby permitted a close encounter with the visually arresting folding rock formations near Wiseman’s Bridge. I then made the obligatory detour to Laugherne, home of Dylan Thomas’ boathouse. To honour the legend, the sketchbook came out one final time. Well into the home straight, I soaked up some final impressions of south-west Wales: the pretty town of St Clears, the strapping Carmarthenshire cattle, the river Towy’s course through the ancient town of Carmarthen.

And so, after all the beaches and castles, hills and countryside, seabirds and kites, it was a mundane affair cycling into Llanelli’s city centre just before sunset. At least I had one last, unbridled joy in store – to be back in a proper bed again.

Surviving Winter….in the Garden

Rosie Kressman

Winter: my least favourite season. I appreciate the clarity of light, the contrast of bare branches against a white sky, the revealing of the elegant structures of the now leafless trees (front cover). But it’s dark and cold, and I’m just not suited to it.

At some point in my newsletter articles I like to ponder a subject which is beyond my understanding. This is an effort on my part to expand my mental horizons, and in this case, it is a particularly appropriate analogy because I’ve been thinking about adaptation and migration of humans and plants. How did I come to live in a country that makes me miserable for four months of the year? The cold and damp of winter burrows into my joints and sits there gnawing away until spring, by which time I’m so fed up that I wish that I’d bypassed it all by hibernating or heading off to a more welcoming climate.

Evolution is a subject which I find fascinating and overwhelming. Before I began working at the Botanic Garden, I had a basic understanding of the concept of natural selection but no practical application for this knowledge. Little has changed in terms of my understanding - it still blows my mind - but in terms of observing the results of millennia of selection pressure and adaptation, where better to begin than in a garden? We are fortunate here at the Botanic Garden, in that we have marvellous plant collections in our grounds and glasshouses, from a diverse range of habitats across the planet.

In the Temperate House resides the succulent collection. These plants are adapted to environments of extremes: temperatures in here go up to 40°C during the day in summer, and as low as 3°C at night in winter. The succulents display a number of adaptations including thickened, water-storing stems and leaves; waxy, reduced leaves or spines; and even a method of transpiration which allows them to take in CO2 during the cooler, more humid nights, thus reducing water loss through their stomata. We don’t water them between October and March, and they can tolerate the low temperatures as long as they are dry.

The Tropical House provides an escape from the physical and emotional challenges of a Welsh winter! Our collections feature tropical species from many genera, which demonstrate specialised adaptations to their environment. While you walk round, look at how each plant has features which enable it to thrive in its particular ‘niche’: twining stems and leaves, water-collecting structures, dark, chlorophyll-rich tissues, aerial roots…

The Orchid House is at its best at this time of year. The orchids are celebratory: their main flowering period is November to March, and they are popping flowers almost daily. No New Year come-down or January Blues for them! They are defiant of the lower temperatures, raising their flowers to meet the unique quality of light that finds them in winter, when the trees along the railway line to the south of the Orchid House have dropped their leaves, and the shade tent has been removed from the glasshouse.

Out and about in the Garden, it’s a more sombre picture, as many of our native plants have adapted to the cold winters by throwing off their foliage in autumn or hiding underground in the form of starchy storage organs. The textured bark of Acer griseum in the Long Border is all the more beautiful in winter though, and we have been planting shrubs such as Daphne bholua and Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Charles Lamont’ for winter scent. And now the conifers get their chance to shine, having been outperformed by the showier deciduous plants throughout the year. So, it’s not all bad really.

I am always amazed at the resilience of plants, having witnessed such extremes of hot and cold here in Britain just in the last 12 months. But when an organism is so closely adapted to its environment, small changes can have a big impact. We are increasingly seeing major climatic changes, which are happening at an accelerated rate, outpacing many organisms’ ability to adapt. As human beings, we have moulded our environments to ourselves, rather than vice versa, so it can be easy to forget that plants and animals can’t do that.

I think about this kind of thing a lot, but especially during the winter in Britain. Observing how plants are so neatly adapted to their environments, why would humans choose to populate such an unsuitable environment? As almost hairless, non-hibernating animals, how did we end up living in a place whose winter is unpleasant enough even with the assistance of down jackets and central heating? I consulted the National Geographic for an answer and was rewarded with a nice little summary of the migration of human beings around the globe(Genographic Project / Map of Human Migration. (2018)). I can now reveal that we all originate from Africa, where having central heating and down jackets wasn’t so important. Also, we used to be hairier, which would have helped. Explorers started to migrate around 60,000 to 70,000 years ago, through Asia, to the Americas and eventually spreading across Europe about 40,000 years ago - presumably having mastered the art of fire-lighting and the production of rudimentary winter-wear.* Our ancestors were clearly skilled - and determined - enough to make a go of it, and a few tens of thousands of years along the line this is why I now find myself suffering another cold dark winter in north Wales, and looking forward to the emergence of the first spring bulbs, which had the sense to hide away for the worst of it.

*I’m joking – humans had been starting fires long before then. Not sure when down jackets arrived though.

Reference:

National Geographic Partners, LLC. (2018) Genographic Project / Map of Human Migration. Available at https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/human- journey/ (Accessed 12th November 2018).

The Marine Botany of the Shoreline at Treborth Botanic Garden

Beth Scrutton and David Cheshire-beeson

Treborth Botanic Garden is located along the shore of the Menai Strait between two iconic crossings: the Thomas Telford Suspension Bridge and the Robert Stephenson Britannia Bridge. The coastal margin is a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), with its mature woodland of native trees supporting a diverse ecosystem of plants, fungi, birds, mammals (including red squirrels) and an abundance of invertebrates. On the seaward side of the woodland is the rocky shoreline, glimpsed through the trees, but rarely explored and which is host to an entirely different kind of plant diversity.

While the beach may look uniform from a distance, when examined more closely it is seen to support a variety of seaweeds and invertebrates which are at home in the fast-flowing waters along the rugged shoreline. Seaweeds, technically known as ‘algae’, fall into three main categories: green algae (Chlorophyta), brown algae (Phaeophyta), and red algae (Rhodophyta). Like the more advanced seed plants, seaweeds have the ability to carry out photosynthesis to obtain energy, but unlike most other plants they can tolerate continuous immersion in saltwater. While the seaweeds can be classified broadly by pigmentation, they have unique characteristics and morphologies that help to differentiate the individual species. Different forms of seaweeds can be found throughout the world, adapted to tropical and temperate conditions, and even polar marine habitats.

The Treborth Botanic Garden shoreline is home to at least 12 species of algae, with some more prolific/widespread than others. The distribution of seaweeds along the shoreline is far from uniform, as species with different levels of tolerance of saltwater conditions, exposure to air and the stress of fast-moving waters, are found in areas where they are best adapted to survive. Higher on the shoreline, we find species that can tolerate long periods of exposure to the drying 15

effects of the air, and at lower levels, where seaweeds are constantly submerged, we find robust species that are able to withstand the stress of the fast-moving currents for which the Menai Strait is famous. Along the length of the shoreline the distribution of species varies depending on the substrate, with seaweeds more easily able to attach to surfaces and crevices of rocks, than to the looser sand and gravel. At the base of Paxton’s Cascade (cliff-face waterfall), there is a zone dominated by species of green algae which thrive in the brackish conditions (merging of freshwater with saltwater).

Living in and among the seaweeds are invertebrates (animals without backbones), including stationary or slow-moving animals like limpets, and more mobile animals such as crabs and jellyfish. On the Treborth shoreline there is a multitude of barnacles, snails and limpets that have established themselves on the rocky surfaces, and with patience and a keen eye it is possible to spot crabs in the rockpools and crevices, and jellyfish along the water’s edge. With a magnifying glass, an abundance of smaller invertebrates can also be observed as they go about their lives in the protective canopy of the seaweed “forest”.

Common seaweed species at Treborth:

Green Algae/Chlorophyta: Cladophora rupestris, Ulva intestinalis (Figure 2), Ulva lactuca

Red Algae/Rhodophyta: Chondrus crispus, Polysiphonia lanosa (Figures 5 and 6), Porphyra purpurea

Brown Algae/Phaeophyta: Ascophyllum nodosum (Figure 5), Fucus serratus (Figure 8), Fucus spiralis, Fucus vesiculosus, Laminaria digitata, Pelvetia canaliculata

Fig. 5. Ascophyllum nodosum and Fig. 6. Polysiphonia lanosa [p. 15] Polysiphonia lanosa [p. 15]

Two European Gardens: Puerto de la Cruz Botanic Garden (Tenerife) and Vallon du Stang Alar, Brest (Brittany)

Angela Thompson

Within the last twelve months, we have had two short trips abroad, neither to very unfamiliar cultures but in search of warmth and a degree of differentness (yes, it’s in the OED). Of course, I feel visits to local botanic gardens and the like are mandatory…

Last Christmas was spent on Spain’s Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands, just 60-odd miles west of Morocco. We stayed in Puerto de la Cruz on the north coast in the shadow of the very-occasionally active volcano Teide. The climate there is subtropical, with the extremes of an otherwise much drier climate being moderated by humid westerly winds off the Atlantic: generally, summers are long and hot, winters are warm with more rain, and the sun shines much more often than in the UK.

The history of the botanic garden, on the outskirts of Puerto de la Cruz, is very interesting, being established in 1788 as an acclimatisation stop-over for plants brought back to Europe from far-away countries in the great age of Spanish exploration. They were destined for Madrid. However, the winters were too cold there but the botanic garden survived, and collections were preserved and expanded. Now the garden is an important international research centre.

Tenerife was the destination of many university biology field trips that were led by Nigel Brown, and the parties visited the botanic garden to see the collections of tropical and subtropical plants of ornamental and economic value. Some of the trees are particularly beautiful or interesting due to their age, size, rarity or origins in remote places. There are many varieties of palm trees, bromeliads, arums and figs, including the huge banyan tree (Lord Howe fig, Ficus macrophylla). This specimen has produced, from its branches, many aerial (adventitious) roots that have grown downwards into the soil and eventually thickened and hardened into prop roots or buttresses for the heavy branches above (Figure 9). It now covers a considerable area and each root will eventually become a trunk in its own right. Flamboyant flowers and exotic-sounding names abound: Macadamia nut, avocado, Heliconia sp, Madagascar dragon tree, flame tree, breadfruit, camphor tree, solitary fish-tail palm, screwpine, to mention just a few of the thousands of species growing there. And of course, there’s the endemic Canary Island pine.

With an area of 20,000 m², the garden is not huge, and it is laid out in a rather regimented grid pattern: paths criss-cross, mainly at right angles, but there

are a few circular areas and ponds. However, it seems to pack in an impressive array of plants, and to a visitor who has never been to the subtropics, never mind anywhere hotter, it certainly is a fascinating and rather magical place.

We were on more familiar ground when we went to the western-most area of Brittany, France. This is Finistère, once the name of a sea area in our Shipping Forecast, now Fitzroy. Its largest city is Brest, and on its outskirts, you will find the Vallon du Stang Alar, with its public park along the banks of a small stream and Jardin du Conservatoire Botanique National de Brest on the side of the valley.

The Conservatoire’s claim to fame are the tropical glasshouses, containing plants that are threatened with extinction, collections that are the largest in France. Unfortunately, they weren’t open when we visited in May – we just missed the April opening and were too early for the July and August open period! However, we could see the extensive area of the glasshouses on the hillside and were informed that there were walkways, ponds, different habitats including hot and humid zones and deserts, and exhibitions up there. The publicity photos were certainly impressive and the website (www.cbnbrest.fr) is very informative.

However, there was plenty to see in the surrounding public gardens of the Vallon du Stang Alar. Here, plants from across the world that grow well in the mild climate (similar to Cornwall, but slightly warmer) without the need for glass are grouped geographically either side of the stream that periodically widens out into a series of different-sized lakes. Amongst others, there are Mediterranean, north American, Australian and Asian areas, and a wonderfully-termed Bambouseraie. Waterfalls and cascades break up the progress of the stream, and the views of mature trees of different shades of green on the far bank of the largest water-lily carpeted lake are very attractive (Figure 10). As with most gardens, changes here through the seasons should be dramatic.

Fig. 7. The Boathouse on the shore of the Menai Strait [p. 15]

Fig. 8. Fucus serratus on the shore of the Menai Strait [p. 15]

Fig. 9. Old Banyan tree Lord Howe fig, Ficus macrophylla, in Puerto de la Cruz Botanic Garden, Tenerife. [p. 17]

Fig. 10. Water Lilies at Vallon du Stang Alar, Brittany [p. 17]

Fig. 11. Rhododendron hippophaeoides in Potatso National Park, Yunnan. [p. 28]

Fig. 13. Rheum alexandrae in Potatso Fig. 12. Yunnan snub-nosed National Park, Yunnan [p. 28] monkey [p. 28] 21

Fig. 14. Calceolaria tenella in Chile [p. 24]

Fig. 15. Blue-flowered form of Falklands Lavender, Perezia recurvata, in Chile. [p. 24]

An Update on the Life and Story of Your Slug-Obsessed 2016 Intern

Kerry McDonald

After a very educational and inspiring internship at Treborth, I went on to my third year at Bangor University, where I pursued my interest in parasitology and even used my knowledge from the parasitising nematode of slugs and snails, gained from my little side project at Treborth, in assignments. I did well with all my modules and dissertation and I was planning on progressing into the fourth year of my Master in Zoology.

However, the unexpected hit me, when a student friend of mine forwarded me a PhD project on the nematode I was experimenting with at Treborth, saying that it might as well have been written for me (I had possibly been babbling on about the nematode maybe a bit too much to my poor friend). I very excitedly applied, got an interview and landed a fully-funded PhD at Liverpool John Moores. Brilliant! This is how playing with slugs at Treborth got me the PhD I am now doing, half sponsored by Liverpool John Moores and half by the Royal Horticultural

Fig. 16. Kerry McDonald [p. 23]

Society.

If you have not yet had to endure me enthusiastically telling you about Phasmarhabditis hermaphrodita, it is a species of nematode (tiny microscopic worm) that parasitises some slugs and snails and is used as a biological control of them. However, as I ascertained in my small projects at Treborth, using the product Nemaslug® (a product containing live nematodes), it struggles to survive in different environments. The project itself entails improving the efficacy of the nematode as a biological control of slugs and snails. I am doing this by analysing what ecological conditions (ie temperature, moisture and pH) it bests survives in, moves in and in which condition it is the most pathogenic. I am using different soils from the RHS gardens at Harlow and Wisley, 220kgs from each. Probably a good thing I am not digging up Treborth! I am also testing the impacts of compost without peat vs compost with peat on the nematodes and their pathogenicity.

I am still doing some weekend watering at Treborth, which is when I take advantage of being there, as after I have finished the watering you will see me wandering around, rolling logs over to find slugs which I am using to breed other strains of the nematodes and using in my experiments. So, don’t be alarmed if you see a slightly deranged-looking person running around with a container of slugs - I become that way after rolling a hundred logs over to find a certain species of slug!

Into Chile: A Journey in Two Parts - Part 2

Richard Birch

It takes about four and a half hours on a coach from Melipeuco in the Chilean Lake District to the coastal port town of Puerto Montt. It is not a particularly exciting journey through an agricultural landscape, enlivened by distant views of the snow- capped Andes, but from the coach the tall flower panicles of Eryngium paniculatum are visible on the roadside. It is one of a few plants that can hold its own among the non-native weeds of European origin, as is Alstroemeria aurea, the Peruvian lily. Both are good herbaceous plants for that very reason.

Puerto Montt is a ferry terminal from where it is possible to catch a cargo ferry that travels south to Patagonia through the Chilean fjords, stopping at isolated settlements that can only be reached by sea. The journey takes four days, but we

are advised that the ferry passes through the ‘Roaring Forties’, famous for mountainous seas, and we should expect to spend the time in our cabin playing cards and feeling seasick. The reality is unexpectedly different, for the entire journey takes place in flat calm and brilliant sunshine. It is an unprecedented opportunity to watch the wildlife of the southern seas and the route passes through pods of dusky dolphin hundreds strong, and dozens of pelagic seabirds from the diminutive Wilson’s storm petrel, the size of a sparrow, to the giant southern royal albatross, like a small aeroplane.

At dawn of the fourth day the ferry arrives in Puerto Natales. The weather is brisk, and Puerto Natales has the feel of a derelict frontier town, although the modern city of Punta Arenas is further south. Natales is a popular destination because it is the launching-off point for Patagonia’s premier tourist destination, the National Park of Torres del Paine.

There is no doubting the sheer spectacle presented by the twin edifices of the Torres del Paine massif (Figure 22, back cover), sticking up like a jagged tooth marking the southern end of the mighty Andes. But the park is a victim of its own grandeur. Tourists flock to Patagonia just to visit it, and the delicate ecosystem has suffered degradation from the effects of too many visitors. In 2010, a careless tourist started a devastating fire that destroyed 17,000 hectares of southern heath and beech woodland. Regeneration is painfully slow and consists largely of primary colonising non-native weeds. Patches of native vegetation can be elusive. When found though, there are many exciting plants. One of the most exciting is the slipperwort, Calceolaria uniflora (Figure 19).

This plant was far more common than expected, and it forms a major constituent of the close sward of ground-hugging herbs, although peak flowering is about a month earlier than mid-January. It is a very striking plant, with its grotesquely distended lower lip, flame-orange flecked with brown, and set off by that prominent white bar. The pollinator is a bird, the least seed-snipe, which resembles a hybrid between a plover and a quail. It is drawn to the white bar, which contains a high proportion of fatty cells, and as it pecks at it, pollen is dusted on its head to be picked up by the next flower visited. Many of the plants have had the white bar pecked away indicating how effective this strategy is, but in any population, there are numerous hybrids with other Calceolaria species, which have an entirely different pollination mechanism. The diversity of yellow-flowered Calceolaria are insect pollinated and there are innumerable hybrids between them, but these include hybrids with bird-pollinated forms, so the mechanism is not fool- proof.

Calceolaria uniflora is in cultivation – as a hybrid with another species called Calceolaria fothergillii, which occurs on the Falklands. This hybrid, sold as

Calceolaria ‘Walter Shrimpton’ is not the easiest plant to grow, as it prefers cool summers and dry winters, which is something of a reversal of what we can offer it in our gardens if current trends continue. It can persist in a free-draining raised bed, but it needs lifting and dividing every year or two to keep it healthy. In the wild, C. uniflora appears to be quite short-lived, as none of the plants we saw formed large mats. Seed collected in Chile flowered in the first year.

The yellow-flowered Calceolarias are easier in cultivation and contain examples of woody shrubs and annual bedding plants. In Chile, there are a bewildering number of superficially-similar species, the most distinctive of which is Calceolaria tenella (Figure 14), a plant of wet ledges and rock faces that will grow if given similar conditions in Britain, provided it has some protection from the hardest frosts.

We continue further south to Punta Arenas, a city on the edge of the Patagonian steppe. It is a much more cosmopolitan 21st century city than Puerto Natales and lacks any great charm beyond its leafy centre. There was a very obliging colony of Imperial cormorant on the beach, providing an opportunity to watch the parental behaviour of these elegant birds against a backdrop of gigantic Antarctic tourist ships that dock here on their way further south.

Beyond the city is the seemingly endless Patagonian steppe, and it is over 100 miles east to the border of Argentina and the national park of Pali Aike. It is very much the poor relation to Torres del Paine, with no fuel stops and absolutely no facilities beyond the strategically-manned gatehouse, which prohibits entry before eight a.m. The difficulties of access are compensated by the wide vistas, broken by the extinct cones of ancient volcanoes and the folds of pahoehoe lava (Figure 17) which make traversing the footpaths tough going. The list of birds and animals is impressive though: Chilean flamingo, rhea, tawny-throated dotterel, Humboldt’s hog-nosed skunk and the ubiquitous Guanaco (Figure 20). Plants include the domes of Falklands Lavender Perezia recurvata, which at its best has flowers of azure blue (Figure 15), but can vary to the palest grey-blue. Collected seed germinated sporadically, and the iniquitous growing season of 2018 inflicted further mortality, but one healthy plant remains. Wiser heads tell me it is a shy flowerer in cultivation, which may explain why it is unobtainable. We shall see.

There is a ferry from Punta Delgada across the narrow isthmus of the eastern end of the Magellan Straits that takes the traveller onto the island of Tierra del Fuego. It’s a short crossing of 30 minutes, but catching the early ferry requires a night’s wild camping on the beach, where the strand line is marked by the spectacular Sea cabbage Senecio candicans (Figure 21). As dusk falls – an event that doesn’t occur until midnight this far south – an exploration of brackish marsh on the landward side of the raised beach reveals other saltmarsh plants that are almost

familiar. A sea heath Frankenia microphylla with larger flowers than our own native form F. laevis, a brookweed Samolus spathulatus which looks nothing like our own diminutive brookweed S. valerandi, and a bog pimpernel with bigger flowers Anagallis alternifolia. Interesting stuff to the lover of saltmarsh plants, especially as it is accompanied by the soulful calls of waders in the eerie half-light.

Tierra del Fuego is more steppe, but the western coast is sheltered from the elements by facing back to Punta Arenas – a longer ferry crossing of about four hours from the Fuegian port of Porvenir. Not far from there is the only mainland colony of king penguin at Pinguino Rey, and further south still, the climate suddenly changes from continental to oceanic. This is the beginning of the Magellanic heath and bog

Ostensibly, this is the least interesting part of a Chilean journey because it is so familiar. Many of the constituents of Magellanic bog can be found in equivalent Welsh bogs, including a plant we had been hoping to see: Magellanic sedge Carex magellanica. You could, of course, travel up to the Migneint and see it there, and we have done so, although it is very rare. This is no alien spread by the agent of man: it is a plant of circum-global distribution, found at both poles. Did it travel as a seed in the plumage of an Arctic tern, or the crop of a boreal sandpiper? And from which direction? It is not the most spectacular plant on which to end an epic journey, but there is a mystery to it that transcends its appearance. Like Chile in general, there is more to it than meets the eye.

FOOTNOTE: The film that accompanies this account, Into Chile Part II will be screened at Bangor Bird Group winter meeting at 7:30 p.m. on 13th March 2019 in the Brambell Building.

Fig. 17. Pahoehoe lava in Pali Aike, Chile [p. 24].

The Tea Horse Road

John Gorham

While most people will be familiar with the Silk Road, along which silk (then a Chinese monopoly) and other goods were traded with Europe and western Asia, the Ancient Tea Horse Road was also an important trading route. Or rather routes, since there were multiple paths between China and Tibet, and on to India. The main exchange was of Chinese black tea for Tibetan horses. China needed these horses for its army at various times during its turbulent history. At times of strong government, as in the Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE), the empire was able to trade on favourable terms with the nomads to the west, but in times of weakness the lack of horses from central Asia reinforced Chinese military weakness. Tea seems not to have been consumed in Tibet and Central Asia until the Tang dynasty, coinciding with the decline of the Silk Monopoly. In Tibet, pu’er tea was a popular addition to a diet dominated by yak meat and dairy products, with a little barley and few vegetables. Tibetan buttered tea, mixed with tsampa (roasted barley) and yak butter, is rich in nutrients, helps to decrease cholesterol and lower blood pressure. Butter tea is an acquired taste!

In Tibet in the 7th century, at the same time as the rise of the Tang Dynasty, the land of Bod was unified for the first time by King Songtsän Gampo (604 -50 CE). Under his rule Tibetan power spread rapidly across a huge area from Yunnan in the east to Ladakh in the west. Diplomatic relations with China were first established in 608 CE, and in 640 Songtsän Gampo requested the hand of a Chinese noblewoman in marriage. Emperor Taizong agreed, and Princess Wencheng of Tang married the Tibetan ruler. Following Songtsän Gampo’s conquest of western Yunnan, tea first entered Tibet as a luxury commodity. During the reign of King Tridu Songtsän (677-704), the Tibetan aristocracy had taken to regularly consuming tea. In the later Tang and early Song periods (approximately between 750 and 1000 CE), tea consumption became popular across Tibetan society.

The Chinese black tea is not the same as the black tea that we drink. It is made from the leaves of Camellia sinensis var. assamica, a large-leafed tea grown in the mountains of southern and western Yunnan and is known as pu’er tea. This comes in many forms and it is difficult for the amateur to be certain of the quality of commercially available pu’er tea. Traditionally pu’er tea was made from the leaves of wild tea trees, some more than 500 years old. Today most pu’er teas are blends made from carefully-tended tea estates. Unlike most tea, the fermented pu’er tea can be preserved for years, and pu’er tea can improve with age, like a vintage wine. Really old, good quality pu’er tea can attract enormous prices, up to £500 per gramme. In the U.K., pu’er tea sells for about £150 per kg.

Yunnan Province, particularly the southern regions of Xishuangbanna and Pu’er, is the original home of pu’er tea, but large-leafed Camellia sinensis var. assamica is widely cultivated in Yunnan, and in Sichuan. The most celebrated areas of pu’er production have traditionally been the ‘Six Great Tea Mountains’ in Xishuangbanna. To the west of the Mekong were another six minor tea mountains. By the mid-20th century, these mountains had been largely abandoned or over- picked. The government designated a new ‘Six Great Tea Mountains’ famous for producing tea in the same area, including Youle – the only one of the original six mountains in the new list. Most of the tea went north to China and Tibet, but tea also went south to India, Burma, Laos and Thailand.

Pu’er tea starts as maocha, a relatively unoxidized green tea that is produced from the bud and top 3-4 leaves (in contrast to bud and 2 leaves used for green tea). The leaves are dried and then dry roasted, rubbed and rolled. Some oxidation occurs at this stage, but ripe pu’er tea is the result of further oxidation and fermentation under controlled conditions of temperature and humidity. One of the main organisms involved in this fermentation is the fungus Aspergillus luchuensis (formerly included in A. niger). Originally some of the fermentation and oxidation would have taken place during transportation to Tibet as a natural ageing process on the long journey, but modern mass production relies on artificial ageing in the Wo Dui process. The tea is then compressed into a variety of shapes from simple rectangular bricks to squares, balls, bowls (tuocha) and bings (round cakes). The latter shape is often used for higher quality tea on sale in Yunnan in a variety of sizes with 357 g being common.

There were two principle Tea Horse routes, a northern one from Ya’an in Sichuan via Luding, Kangding, Batang and Chamdo to Lhasa, and a southern route from Pu’er (Simao) in southern Yunnan via Dali, Lijiang, Deqin and Nyingchi, also ending in Lhasa. These routes were in operation from the Tang dynasty (618 – 907 CE) until modern roads were built in Tibet in the 1960s. Much of the transportation was by mule, but over some sections, tea porters would carry stacks of tea bricks weighing up to 90 kg on their backs, with the assistance of metal-tipped staffs.

The main Tea Horse route from Pu’er headed north, past Erhai Lake, to the ancient walled city of Dali. Between 1856 and 1872 Dali was the capital of a breakaway Hui Muslim state, a relic of the Mongol invasion of the 13th century. The trade between Pu’er and Dali has traditionally been dominated by Hui Muslim merchants operating ‘Muslim mule-caravans’. North of Dali the route continued via the town of Shaxi, once an important bazaar, to the ancient city of Lijiang, cultural centre of the Naxi people and the Yi, their neighbours from the surrounding mountains. Today Lijiang has a thriving tourist trade, and the town is filled with shops selling bings of pu’er tea, as well as local delicacies such as yak meat. North

of Lijiang the route follows Highway 214 to the Tibetan city of Chamdo. It passes close to the ‘First Bend’ of the Yangtze River (Jinsha Jiang, the ‘River of Golden Sands’). It then enters Tiger Leaping Gorge, where the Yangtze flows north through a series of rapids for 15 km (9.5 miles) at the bottom of a 2,000 m valley.

After Tiger Leaping Gorge, the route continues northwest through deep valleys in the Hengduan Mountain Range to Shangri-La (formerly Zhongdian, or Gyalthang in Tibetan) at 3,160 m (10,370 ft), a city of 130,000 people, many of Tibetan origin from the Kham region (hence khampa). It was named in 2001 after the fictional place in James Hilton’s 1933 book ‘Lost Horizon’. Its Tibetan feel is reinforced by the Ganden Sumtsenling Monastery of the Yellow Hat Buddhist sect, and said to resemble the Potala Monastery in Lhasa. The route continues to Deqin, beneath the highest mountain in Yunnan, Meili Xueshan (6,740m; 22,113 ft) before entering the Tibet Autonomous Region and joining the Tea Horse Road from Sichuan at Markam (Mangkham). West of Markam there are three routes leading to Lhasa, the most northerly passing through Chamdo.

Our own visit to southern China in May 2018 began with a direct flight from Manchester to Hong Kong, followed by a 7 hour wait for a connection to Guilin in Guangxi province. The name means ‘forest of sweet Osmanthus’ (Osmanthus fragrans), the flowers of which are used to flavour tea. The city has about 5 million people and, as everywhere in China, new construction (flats, roads, shops and high-speed rail lines) is unmissable. A cruise down the Li River took us to Yangshuo past the spectacular karst scenery of this area. We stayed just outside Yangshuo on the Yulong River, where bamboo rafts carry tourists downriver, and are then put on lorries and moved back upstream. Unfortunately, we missed the cormorant fishermen for which the Li River at Yangshuo is famous, but we did see the spectacular night-time Liu Sanjie performance on the Li River. North of Guilin are the famous rice terraces of Longji. Access to the Zhong village of Pingan involves a final climb up the hill, initially surrounded by tourist shops, but at the top just a narrow footpath. Despite our various medical problems, we made it without recourse to the sedan chairs that were on offer. Even in such an inaccessible village the scale of new building was impressive – especially as all the building materials had to be carried up the hill and through the village on horseback. It was the start of the rice planting season, and the terraces were attractively full of water.

A two-hour drive north of Longji brought us to the Dong village of Chengyang with its covered wooden ‘Wind and Rain’ bridges and drum towers (conical, pagoda-like lookout towers). Our first experience of a Chinese bullet train, albeit for only 20 minutes, delivered us to Congjiang, and a short drive took us to the large Dong village of Zhaoxing in Guizhou Province. After visiting another Dong

village in the surrounding hills, we were driven north to Kaili (population 500,000) and to a couple of Miao villages. The Miao are famous for the silver headdresses that the women wear on special occasions, and they are related to the Hmong of Indochina. Langde was very much a tourist village, although not operating in full tourist mode when we were there. Across the valley, Jidao was more original, and in some ways, more interesting.

Two hours travelling west by bullet train brought us to Kunming in Yunnan, and then five hours north by road delivered us to Xizhou (2,007 m; 6,585 ft), near Dali. Xizhou is a small agricultural town with a lively produce market and old Bai courtyard houses. It hosted a radio station and airstrip for the Flying Tigers during the second world war. Dali is now a large modern town (population 650,000) near the southern end of Erhai Lake and at the base of the Cangshan Mountains. The old, walled town retains some of its original character, albeit adapted for the tourist trade. This is where we joined the ancient Tea Horse Road. The main architectural feature of the area north of Dali is the Chong Shen monastery complex with its many temples and three tall, tower-like pagodas. The tallest and oldest pagoda was built between 823-840 CE by king Quan Fengyou of the Kingdom of Nanzhao and is 69.6 m (227 feet) tall. The other two were built about a century later. All three have survived numerous earthquakes, invasions etc.

North of Dali we stayed in the village of Shaxi, an important stopping point on the Tea Horse Road. It is a well-preserved/restored example of an old Bai village and contains the ancient Yulin Bridge, one of the few remaining physical remains of the Tea Horse Road. Horses in the area are more likely to be carrying tourists than tea these days. Further north, our next stop was in Shuhe on the outskirts of Lijiang. This was another stopping point on the Tea Horse Road where the Ming Dynasty Qinglong Bridge crosses a small river. Today it is popular with Chinese tourists, and especially those having their wedding photographs taken. This happens before the wedding, can last all day and often involves hiring traditional costumes, both local and classical Mandarin-style. Lijiang is a city of over 1 million people in a valley between surrounding mountains, including the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain (5,596 m; 18,360 ft). Not that we saw it – it rained most of the time that we were there, and the stone flag streets of Shuhe became torrential streams! The area is home to the Naxi people and has a distinct cultural feel. Our guide in Lijiang told me that he had helped the photographer Michael Freeman during his visit to photograph the Tea Horse Road a few years ago (Freeman and Ahmed, 2015). And yes, we did buy a bing of pu’er tea, but we preferred the raw, unfermented variety.

A visit to the surrounding countryside brought us to Joseph Rock’s house in Yuhu village. Joseph Francis Charles Rock (Josef Franz Karl Rock) was born in Vienna

in 1884 but emigrated to New York in 1905 and to Honolulu in 1907, where he became an authority on the local flora. In 1920 he went to Asia and spent several decades in China, particularly the borders near Tibet. The US Department of Agriculture was looking for a plant collector to bring back samples of the chaulmoogra tree (Hydnocarpus wightianus) from Asia, as this was considered a possible cure for leprosy. Rock was hired and sent to Siam (Thailand), where he mounted an expedition that travelled up through the far north of the country, into Burma and India. It was on this first trip that Rock penned his first article for National Geographic. He was a prolific plant collector, and he went on a further plant collecting trip to western China, to seek out samples of blight-resistant chestnut trees to replace the chestnut trees that were dying out in America's forests.

Over the next year, his plant collecting activities in remote areas of Yunnan drew the attention of the National Geographic Society's president, Gilbert Grosvenor, who was impressed enough to propose that the society take over sponsorship from the USDA, and to provide Rock with funds to allow him to travel further afield and for longer periods. Joseph Rock spent the next 18 months on an epic plant collecting expedition across Yunnan, ranging from the tropical regions on the borders of Burma and Siam to the mountains of eastern Tibet. He collected thousands of seeds of numerous plant species, and around 60,000 herbarium samples. Gilbert Grosvenor later described the collection of 493 different rhododendrons gathered by the National Geographic Expedition as "one of the most remarkable ever brought together." The specimens collected by Rock were distributed to botanical gardens in the US and the UK. Rock also collected birds and animals from Yunnan, all of which were meticulously documented. His collection was described as one of the most unusual and "the most important single contribution" to the Smithsonian National Museum natural history section atthe time.

In the 1920s, there were few foreigners in Yunnan, and those that did find themselves in trouble would expect their consulates in Kunming to have leverage over the Chinese authorities. At that time, Han Chinese influence did not extend as widely as it does today. Yunnan province was home to many non-Han ethnic groups such as the Yi, the Naxi of Lijiang and the Bai of Dali, with varying degrees of independence. There was also another recent migrant minority - the handful of western missionaries who had set up churches, schools and clinics in far-flung communities. The lack of central authority meant that Yunnan was ruled de facto by local strong men. Rock stayed for several decades in Yunnan, adopting local dress and producing a Naxi dictionary. He seems to have been quite successful at cultivating friendships with local dignitaries.

At the time of our visit, Rock’s house in Yuhu was undergoing extensive renovation. In many rooms, photographs and other documents lay scattered about under a layer of dust, but still gave a vivid impression of his lifestyle. Nearby, we passed Lijiang Alpine Botanical Garden, believed the highest botanical garden in the world. It was built jointly by China and Britain under a contract signed between the Edinburgh Royal Botanical Garden and the Kunming Plant Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in May 2000. The Lijiang Alpine Botanical Garden covers an area of 279 hectares at an elevation from 2,680 to 4,300 m.

Wenhai Lake (3,100 m) is located on the southern slope of Yulong (Jade Dragon) snow mountain and is part of the Lashihai provincial level Alpine Wetlands Nature Reserve. Wenhai lake is a seasonal alpine lake and wetland throughout the spring and summer. Wenhai lake basin is one big grazing ground with various little streams winding through the grassland. During July and August when the rainy season arrives, water begins to rise, and the lake is usually filled up by October. During the winter season, the water level drops again until March of the next year. Between November and January, birds from as far as Siberia and Qinghai come to Wenhai. I found several species of Rhododendron in the hills surrounding the lake, but the most astonishing sight was not the native flora, but the fields of pinks (Dianthus sp.) and lupins (Lupinus sp.) in the local village!

The original plan had been to stay one night in Tacheng to see the Black or Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys (Rhinopithecus bieti) in Nujiang Langcang Gorge alpine conifer and mixed forests of the Yun Range, part of the Hengduan Mountains. However, the hotel in Tacheng was closed for renovation and so we set off from Shuhe at 5.00 a.m. for the long journey to Shangri-La via Tacheng. Unfortunately, it rained all day, so not only were the monkeys looking rather bedraggled when we saw them, (Figures 12 and 18) but we also had a limited

Fig. 18. A rain-soaked Yunnan snub-nosed monkey. [p. 28]

appreciation of the dramatic scenery of the upper Yangtze valley. Yunnan snub- nosed monkeys are found at a higher altitude than any other primate, except man. They inhabit coniferous forest between 3,000 and 4,500 m above sea level where frost and snow are common. Only 17 groups with a total population of less than 1,700 animals survive in northwest Yunnan and neighbouring regions in the Tibet Autonomous Region. The first comprehensive study of their ecology and behaviour only took place in the 1990s. A large part of their diet is lichen, which is plentiful in the forests but not very nutritious. Despite the early start and the wet weather, seeing these rare primates at close quarters was the wildlife highlight of the trip.

And so to Shangri-La (Zhongdian). At over 3,000 m it is not uncommon to find oxygen cylinders available to visitors prone to altitude sickness! Although now a sizeable modern town of over 130,000 people (80% of Tibetan origin), the old town is relatively small and characterful. It is certainly a place to experience Tibetan culture without the problems of travelling to Tibet Autonomous Region itself. An interesting feature of the old town is that signs above shops and restaurants often have the name in English as well as Chinese – leading to some unusual translations (‘The spring breeze is not as good as you’ above one clothing shop). Not far from our hotel was the biggest prayer wheel in the world – a truly impressive sight – but the main religious feature was the Ganden Sumtsenling Monastery. Although it was a bit of climb (especially at 3,000 + m), the view from the top was impressive, but not as impressive as the view from the White Chicken Temple. Strangely, the walk up the hill to this temple in the middle of Shangri-La produced more native flora than many visits to the surrounding countryside, probably because the plants escaped the attentions of grazing yaks and horses, which severely limited the floral diversity in places like Wenhai and Napa Lakes, and in parts of Potatso National Park. The latter did, however, contain some botanical interest in the form of various Rhododendron and Azalea species, and a few herbs that had evaded the yaks, including the bizarre rhubarb, Rheum alexandrae (Figure 13).

A two-hour drive north of Shangri-La took us to the Dhondrupling Monastery set amid rugged hills. Compared with Ganden Sumtsenling this monastery had few visitors and offered a more authentic experience of Tibetan Buddhism. The journey through high mountains and steep valleys gave a foretaste of the remainder of the Tea Horse Road to Lhasa, still over 500 miles away.

References

Forbes A and Henley D (2012) China’s Ancient Tea Horse Road. Cognoscenti Books. Kindle Edition.

Freeman M and Ahmed S (2015) Tea Horse Road. China’s Ancient Trade Road to Tibet. River Books, Thailand. ISBN 978 616 7339 53 5.

New Zealand: Bike, Boots, Beeches and Beaches

Jen Towill

As I watched the water draining down the plughole in the bathroom, I swayed slightly and felt a bit dizzy. It was my first day in New Zealand and the effects from flying to the other side of the planet in just 29 hours were having an effect. The water going down the plughole looked wrong somehow and through the dizziness it slowly dawned on me from somewhere in my memory that things sometimes worked the other way around here.

Andrew and Cath Dixon had kindly picked me up from the airport and put me up at their house in Diamond Harbour on the outskirts of Christchurch for my first few days. The first morning I had gone straight down to the beach for a swim and wondered at the quietness of the beach on a Sunday, until I realised it was 7 am. Coming from January in the UK to bright skies at 7 am was an additional factor for my confused body clock to cope with. Andrew and Cath had also been very generous and offered to lend me one of their bikes for my trip, a journey which I had a rough idea of route, but which was to be flexible enough to allow me the freedom to change plans along the way.

A ferry is a great way to start a trip, and I got the 6 am ferry from the small jetty in Diamond Harbour to join a bus which would take me out of the city to the start of the mountains. As I left the ferry, I asked the attendant how much I needed to pay, as all the other commuter passengers had their passes. His response was simply, ‘You’re alright mate’, and I wheeled my bike off with a smile and feeling of freedom.

My first riding day was a long one into the heart of the mountains up over the Lewis Pass, and I set off early cycling along in the already hot January sunshine with the mountains ahead of me in the distance. At the side of the road I was greeted with the sight of familiar grasses and flowering plants. Sweet vernal grass (Anthoxanthum odoratum), bird’s-foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus) and vipers bugloss (Echium vulgare): it was like a British meadow in July, (which are not so easy to find these days) but instead, like me, they were here, on the other side of the world, in January. It made me consider our impact on the world’s flora, how natural these plants felt to me here in the January heat, but how uncannily unnatural the reality of it was. Their seeds had been transported with crops brought from Europe within the last years, and what an impact people have had since then. The rolling hills before the mountains mirrored those of our own uplands, a green desert of sheep-grazed grassland where forest not so long ago stood.

As the miles went by, the farmed landscape turned into a mountainous one, and the overgrazed hills changed to a forest of southern beech. There are 5 species of southern beech*: hard beech (Fuscospora truncata), black beech (Fuscospora solandri), red beech (Fuscospora fusca), silver beech (Lophozonia menziesii) and mountain beech (Fuscospora cliffortioides).

After the first long day’s riding, I stopped at the top of Lewis Pass, the northern most of the three roads that traverse the Southern Alps. Not a high pass (864 m) and thankfully from the east side I had come up, an undulating gradual ascent rather than the sharp height gain on the west side. Tired but happy I pulled off the road and onto a board walk by a small pool. It wasn’t the clearest of water but I didn’t care, and was quickly in the water, treading carefully over the carpet of Drosera species on the boggy edge surrounding the pool. The water was a perfect temperature and the backdrop was a picture-perfect stand of beech trees backed by forested mountains.

After a swim, I tried to have a rest but as I sat down to try and admire the view, I was greeted with my first (but not worst), onslaught of sand flies (Austrosimulium ungulatum). NZ sand flies can be compared to Scottish midges, in that they possess the ability to turn a picture-postcard scene into a very unpleasant experience, causing one to flee from the serenity as quickly as possible. Like midges, wind and movement will keep them at bay, and there were many days that I ended up walking or riding for longer than I would’ve chosen because of them. They are larger than midges and if you are lucky, like me, their bites will cause you far more irritation than a midge bite. From that point onwards until I landed back in the UK, I felt as if I had turned into one big sand-fly bite. Despite them, I still appreciated being where I was, but instead of trying to bear the sand-flies, I retreated from the pool to a pleasant wander through these amazing woods.

Stepping inside the woodlands was like stepping into another world, one which felt ancient, magical, and utterly peaceful. The trees were adorned with glorious mosses and lichens which seemed as much of a component of the forest as the trees themselves, and the understory was teeming with filmy ferns and mosses of all kinds with small streams meandering through them. Perhaps north Wales would have felt like this centuries or even millennia ago, but to me this felt different. I felt as though I could sit and absorb it for hours, days, or forever.

It was here I had my first encounter with NZ wrens or ‘riflemen’ (Acanthisitta chloris), so called because they scuttle up and down trees by spiralling around the trunks. They came incredibly close and seemed to be as inquisitive of me as I was of them, looking me directly in the eye and hopping through the branches around me as I stood still to watch them. Later I found the same with so many of the NZ birds. Those I saw most often in the beech forests were the riflemen, NZ robin

(Petroica australis), tom-tits (Petroica macrocephala), and my most favourite of all, the fantails (Rhipidura fuliginosa). These are small birds with beautiful big fanned tails, fluttering about in a flirtatious undulating flight almost playing with anyone wishing to admire their display. No matter how many times I saw these common birds I never got tired of watching them.

My first encounter with the beech forest had made me decide that I definitely wanted to do some long walks through them, and luckily that’s what a friend of mine also had in mind. James and I undertook a 3-day walk in the Nelson Lakes, up through beech forest to the ‘Blue Lake’. The morning of the walk took us through more of the fabulous beech forest and afterwards followed a small river where the forest began to open up in some parts and other shrubby plants occurred. Clambering up by the side of a waterfall I was greeted by a Hebe sp. (now Veronica sp.) peeping out from the undergrowth. I have to confess I am not a big Hebe fan, and here in its native habitat I couldn’t help feeling it looked a little out of place. ‘Of course’, said James, ‘that’s because your so used to seeing them outside Sainsbury’s’, and he was right (although it was Bangor ASDA that I was used to seeing them). Surely that’s the reason I’m not so keen on this plant - it made me feel a bit sad that I developed a distaste for this plant whose natural habitat was in such an idyllic landscape.

As we neared the Blue Lake, trees became more stunted in their growth as we were now reaching an altitude of over 1000 m. The path wound up beside the river which became a myriad of branching streams, parting and re-joining, creating mini-forested islands through them where tom-tits and riflemen flitted amongst the long pendant lichens and tall dendroid mosses. Small clearings in the forest gave way to standing pools and bogs carpeted with a red-tinged sea of carnivorous sundews (Drosera sp.). In this place I felt very close to believing in fairies.

The Blue lake is supposedly the clearest on the planet, a certainly believable claim when you arrive there. Its clarity is achieved as the water that enters it from Lake Constance above (already extremely clear) filters underground for half a mile and pops up at a spring which then enters a short small stream that enters the Blue Lake. To the Maori, it is an important sacred place, and its spiritual value must be felt by everyone that is lucky enough to arrive here. While walking up from the Blue lake to Lake Constance, the last bit of the upland forest peters out and you are greeted with open mountains above. The beech trees are replaced with an array of NZ alpine plants: mountain daisies (Celmisia spp.), white NZ gentians (Gentianella spp.), and Raoulia spp. all abound. NZ edelweiss (Leucogenes grandiceps) could also be found.

These alpines all display pale coloured flowers. As native NZ insects are primitive in comparison with the bees and suchlike found most of the world over,

flowers here had no reason to put energy into showing themselves off with pretty pinks, mauves or blues to attract non-existent, not yet evolved specific pollinators. Instead, NZ flowers in most cases have evolved to be white and simple, open to all that care to pay them a visit and exchange their food source for gene flow. Those that do flaunt flowers of more passionate dark pinks and reds such as those of rātā have done so to attract the keen eyes of bird pollinators such as tui (Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae) and bellbirds (Anthornis melanura) to their sweet nectar.

We met a friendly hut warden, who was pulling up ‘bloody English weeds’. He told us how the ragwort (Senecio jacobaea) he was pulling had recently made it up to this altitude. It was abundant further down the mountain along with foxgloves and several other meadow species. Again it hit me how ludicrous it was that this yellow aster that wasn’t usually seen as the friendliest of faces in our own soils had managed to stray so far from home in such a short period of time, and how this man was pulling it up high up here in the southern Alps whilst at home we were tutting about the potential impact of NZ willow herb (Epilobium brunnescens) on the upland habitat in Snowdonia.

To make an interesting loop to my journey I decided to walk the Heaphy track, a 4-day trek through a diverse and dramatic scenery. The first day was a steep pull up through forest dominated by red and silver beech, but by now I felt fit and barely felt the weight of my pack as I flew up the track to the hut at 750 m where I spent the first night. It was a drizzly evening and the weather had cooled extensively, so I got into my sleeping bag as soon as I had eaten and had to wrap a survival blanket around the outside of my sleeping bag to try and warm up, and the Christmas turkey effect worked well.

The next morning, I woke up to a soaking sleeping bag due to the condensation inside my tin-foil nest. Luckily the weather had cleared and I let my things dry out in the breeze whilst I walked up the short distance to a nearby peak. My pre-breakfast jaunt up the rocky slope wound through a small but dense patch of rātā in flower. Their bright red elongated stamens which cause this species to create a dazzling red display across mountainsides were in full show as I pushed my way through them. Above them on the rocky scree were alpine species of Raoulia and Hebe, and spectacular views back down to the east coast and out west across Gouland Downs where my journey now led. On my descent, I came across my first kea (Nestor notabilis) of the trip. These inquisitive parrots are one of New Zealand’s most well-known birds. Due to their bold nature they will casually loiter around people but are also renowned for stealing food and wrecking cars! Despite their being seemingly common, it has become evident in recent years that they are in rapid decline and there are now efforts in place by the Department of Conservation to halt this decline.

After breakfast, I began the long gradual descent, now on the west side of the mountains. The vegetation and scenery were completely different from the previous day. I was journeying through Gouland Downs, an ancient landscape dominated by small shrubs, red tussock grass (Chionochloa rubra) and NZ flax (Phormium tenax). Occasional pockets of stunted silver beech cloaked in huge foliose lichens dotted the landscape, which, shrouded in mist and low cloud, was an almost bleak but still beautiful scene. The rivers here were brown from the peaty soils, unlike the crystal clear glacial fed rivers I had encountered on the rest of my trip. That night was another chilly drizzly one, and at dawn I heard the unmistakeable calls of both male and female kiwi birds from the surrounding scrub.

The morning of the third day took me through incredibly different scenery. This time I was back into forest but here on the wet west coast, beech trees fizzled out and were replaced with species of Podocarps (southern hemisphere conifers) and other broad-leaved tree species, vines and tree ferns. The forest floor was carpeted with lush ferns and mosses. The mizzle that accompanied me for much of the day allowed me to fully appreciate this temperate rainforest for what it was. After descending through the forest, I joined the Lewis River which I would follow to the sea, through the dense vegetation of nikau palms (Rhopalostylis sapida), vines and ferns. My last night would be spent camping at the Heaphy hut, where the river met the Tasman Sea. Through the afternoon, as I neared the coast, the rain cleared away and the warm sun came out to greet me as I arrived at the Heaphy hut in the early evening. As the cloud cleared, it revealed my first view of the stunning west coast views in all their glory. I felt an overwhelming sense of well- being here, with the waves crashing on the white sandy beach and the forest backdrop echoing sounds of cicadas behind me.

The final day of the Heaphy track hugged the tumultuous shores of the wind- and rain-swept coast, and wove between long sandy beaches and nikau palm forests undulating across rocky outcrops and densely vegetated ravines shrouded by mist, where dark brown rivers bubble down over boulders to meet the sea. I was sad to finish the Heaphy track, but I was re-united with my bike, and was ready to begin the last leg of my journey, pedalling down the west coast and over Arthur's Pass back to Christchurch. This loop of the north of the South Island had been a place of calming solitude interspersed with friendly faces. The botanical interests and spectacular scenery made it a diverse and interesting journey, and the combination of walking and cycling were a great way to see so much of what this part of New Zealand has to offer.

* (Editor: The southern beeches mentioned here were formerly referred to as species of Nothofagus. They have recently been re-classified as Fucospora species.

Fig. 19. Calceolaria uniflora in Chile. [p. 24]

Fig. 20. Guanacos in Chile. [p. 24]

Fig. 21. Sea cabbage Senecio candicans in Chile. [p. 24]

Fig. 22. Torres del Paine, Chile. [p. 24]

LlynClywedog panorama [p. 11] Panorama inTorres del Paine, [p. 24] Chile