Flowering Plant or Moss - Very Strange !

[Jax2000]

Hi everyone

Does anyone have an idea to which group this plant belongs to as i can not find it in either an extensive moss book (although it does look a little like a Fissidens) or a flowering plant book.

Your help would be much appreciated.

[Farplace]

Where was it growing? How big is it?

[Dorts]

I'd go for Lesser Swine Cress - Coronopus didymus . Smell the leaves, they should smell like the Cress you eat.
Common down around the South Coast.
Dorts.

[pleb]

I think it is the alien clubmoss Selaginella kraussiana. Here is a photo of a specimen from south Devon.



Phil

[aeshna5]

Originally Posted by pleb

I think it is the alien clubmoss Selaginella kraussiana. Here is a photo of a specimen from south Devon.



Phil

Think you've got it there. Definitely not Lesser Swine Cress.

[Dorts]

Originally Posted by pleb

I think it is the alien clubmoss Selaginella kraussiana. Here is a photo of a specimen from south Devon.

Phil

Well done pleb. (I didn't find the photo too clear for my old eyes). I did consider it being a Clubmoss. I've not seen this in the wild. I see it was first recorded in Camborne, W. Cornwall.

Now you've given a correct ID, I seem to remember seeing it used as a pot-plant in floral displays, and as an edging plant in large greenhouses. I hadn't realised it was growing wild.
I now see that we have it up here in N. Wales!
Most interesting, thanks.
Dorts.

[Jax2000]

Thanks everyone for your replies.....especially to Dorts........we can be pretty certain that this is the species in question, as it was found at Tilgate park (Crawley) in a very shaded part of the woodland on the edge of the park. Tilgate park has a walled garden and ornamental aspects across most of the park so this is probably how it arrived in the woodland.

Thanks again

Jax