*1: Newlyn Cliff, 1840,
WC (TRU) (Paton 1969a: 734).
*2: Probus, 1861, ES
(TRU) (Paton 1969a:
734).
In British Isles has
southern and western range, commonest in SW. England.
Widespread in C&S, but it avoids much of the granite
uplands, coastal sands and serpentinite; 'highly
coast-tolerant' (Table 2). Status ± stable since 1960s, or
perhaps slight decrease (change index -13.29: Table 5).
It grows as scattered
plants, often among other low mosses, or occasionally forms
extensive pure low turfs 10 cm across. Habitat notes from
C&S are as follows. Colonises stable, partly bare surfaces
of loamy, silty or clay soil (occasionally sand), on moist
water-retentive or less often rather dry free-draining
substrates, of mildly acidic to circumneutral or weakly basic
reaction, often more or less heavily shaded or in humid
sheltered places (e.g. on N.-facing slopes, or inside
entrances to animal burrows) but sometimes in full sun. Often
found on banks in deciduous woodland (including soil on
wind-thrown trees and edges of wheel ruts on earthy tracks),
beside lanes (commonly at the lowest level where soil is
scraped by tyres), beside streams and rivers (where often
common within flood-zones), on 'hedges', crevices at base of
old walls, in old quarries, cemeteries, gardens, flushes, old
pastures, grassland or scrub above sea-cliffs, exposed soil or
sandrock on sea-cliffs (commonly inside shallow caves in low
sandrock on Scilly). Eight records are from arable fields
(mainly cereal stubbles; once in new grass-ley; twice found to
be common in sheltered bulbfields and other horticultural
fields).
Common associates include
Dicranella
heteromalla, Kindbergia praelonga,
Fissidens bryoides
var. bryoides,
Mnium hornum, Pohlia melanodon;
others recorded include Anthoceros punctatus,
Bryum dichotomum,
Bryum sauteri, Calypogeia arguta, Ceratodon purpureus,
Conocephalum
conicum, Dicranella
rufescens, Dicranella staphylina,
Didymodon
insulanus, Trichodon cylindricus,
Fissidens celticus,
Fissidens dubius,
Fissidens exilis,
Fissidens incurvus,
Fissidens
viridulus, Fossombronia
caespitiformis, Fossombronia pusilla,
Leptodictyum
riparium, Oxyrrhynchium pumilum,
Phaeoceros laevis,
Pleuridium
acuminatum, Pohlia
lutescens, Pseudephemerum
nitidum, Riccia
sorocarpa, Schistostega pennata,
Tortula
truncata.
Tubers not searched for on most plants, but
plentiful on small plants from soil of a trackside bank in
damp pasture. CDP also reported rhizoidal tubers from
gatherings from four arable fields in vc1 and a bulbiform stem
base in one of these samples (in Hill 2005: 44). See Arts
& Nordhorn-Richter (1986) for review of vegetative
propagules, ecology and distribution. Capsules rare
(dioicous); seen twice since 1992: immature 4; dehiscing
[4].