It was a friends birthday last night and I went round the house he is lodging in for a quick dose of mojito’s which turned into a rather intensive consumption. Anyway his landlord had a fish tank and I looked into it and saw nothing of interest just a few mosses and such like.
Later in the pub I sat down next to him and had to ask ‘What’s in the fish tank?’, something he is obviously asked a lot as he offered a short and a long answer I initially choose the short. However as the conversation progressed I guessed he switched to the long answer. Where to me the fish tank on first appearances seems to be a mossaraiurm (is there such a thing, it probably has a posh scientific name).
Anyway it appears that in that tiny fish tank is one of only two mosses that are being cultivated in the world. It is a rare filmy fern moss from the rainforest of Chile. There is only a few small sites in that rain forest where that species grow. Snowdonia has a few sites where a distant cousin grows the Wilson’s Filmy Fern Moss and I regularly take groups up the gorge where this species literally hangs onto its existence.
The geek and the instructor in me was interested in finding out more from this guy. Who described himself as a paleobotanist only interested in species that are still alive today. I had walked into his garden at night, however during the day it is apparently an interesting site to behold. The entire garden, save for the occasional weed is made up of plants that first appeared over 60 million years ago. Like a living museum for rare plants that have somehow avoided becoming part of the fossil record by doing what nature does best and surviving.
He even has a Snowdon Lily growing on his garage roof. I can’t wait for may when it flowers, as to this day I have never seen one, come to think of it I just can’t wait to pop in to see my mate and view his Garden which apparently will be part of the National Open Gardens week later this year.
He then went onto to tell me that as well as the better known species of alpine flowering plants in Snowdonia, many of them that have hung around for millennia, that there are some lesser known extremely rare plants. Plants where the only known surviving example occupy a single small patch of land the size of a dining table or less in some cases. There is potentially a new species of saxifrage just off a path that I know extremely well, that he is waiting for the plant to flower to see if indeed it is a new species.
An utterly amazing guy who I think helps sum up what its like to live in Llanberis, as it attracts people with a passion for anything from climbing through to mountain biking and kayaking through to paleobotanists. Everyday is a school day as they say.
If you’d like to find out more about rare plants then I recommend Mike Raine’s book The Nature of Snowdonia, who ironically used to live next door to the guy who has a prehistoric garden.