Lingmoor Tarn with bogbean A splash of colour trailing down a rock on Lingmoor Fell caught Alastair’s eye and was a puzzle. We took a closer look. A club moss, with spore-cases called cones. Long, creeping stems and upright stalks with cones pale and bright as candles. I knew I’d seen this clubmoss here before so I trawled my photo archive and found Stagshorn clubmoss on 15 August 2010, without those distinctive yellow-green cones. So, an interesting find.
Left to right: first glimpse, resolves into Stagshorn clubmoss with trailing stems and upright spore-cases like cones.
Lingmoor Tarn with a final image of Fir clubmoss deep in a steep bank of heather
There were dragonflies about the fringe of Lingmoor Tarn, so I followed the shore until the heather bank fell sheer into water too deep to wade. I wedged my boots deep in heather and hoped its stems would hold me as I climbed up. There was another club moss so, gripping a root of heather in one hand and holding the camera in the other, I took the picture. Fir clubmoss, Huperzia selago.
Heathers surround the tarn rank with aquatic plants, with water lilies and bogbean and mystery plants too far out to be sure of. I love this fell at any season, but on a hot summer’s day it is blissful. Especially with the prospect of an Atlantic weather front imminent.
We sat looking up to Tarnclose Crag, beside Bleamoss Beck, watching several tiny fish – dark fish swimming above a white stone in the water. What were these little fish? Was it a stone? We used one of my walking poles to touch the stone and it lifted free of the stream bed and a dead trout was caught up and carried downstream as if it were brought to life again. So, Bleamoss Beck is a trout stream.
Heathers surround the tarn rank with aquatic plants, with water lilies and bogbean and mystery plants too far out to be sure of. I love this fell at any season, but on a hot summer’s day it is blissful. Especially with the prospect of an Atlantic weather front imminent.
We sat looking up to Tarnclose Crag, beside Bleamoss Beck, watching several tiny fish – dark fish swimming above a white stone in the water. What were these little fish? Was it a stone? We used one of my walking poles to touch the stone and it lifted free of the stream bed and a dead trout was caught up and carried downstream as if it were brought to life again. So, Bleamoss Beck is a trout stream.
Walking the fells, one often comes upon a hollow between knolls where there was once a tarn. Lingmoor Tarn in August seems to be transitional, a hydrosere- from water to withered and decaying vegetation. There is open water, water lily leaves, and fine green reeds. On the western shore there's a defined shingle bank. Toward the outlet there are the green leaves of bogbean and tiny clumps of heather where islets of silts build up. The picture is confused by reflections of surrounding heather knolls in the tarn. The sump surrounding Lingmoor Tarn mingles heather fell with boggy hollows of sphagnum and bogbean, quaking ground.
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