Great Orme (Gogarth) 6/7/12****

Nottingham catchfly in the rain, July 2012 Wild cotoneaster with a few green berries

The forecast was for persistent and at times torrential rain, so we abandoned our planned walk and took the chance to explore the south end and centre of Great Orme in the morning, although the continual rain made it difficult to explore adequately for flowers around the cliffs.  We walked from our hotel up the road just above the housing that goes to the summit, with plenty of garden escapes (lots of snapdragons!) and wall ferns to record on the way.  The tramway to the top of Great Orme joins this road eventually, just before we arrived at a triangular green where there was knotted hedge-parsley in the verge.  From here we explored the steep slopes and cliffs immediately above, where there was plenty of rock-rose, wild thyme, rest-harrow, carline thistle and, in places, dropwort, a little viper’s bugloss, and rosettes of spiked speedwell in the clefts, although these were only just beginning to grow their flowering spikes.  From here we walked south from the green to the edge of the miniature golf-course.  We gained entrance via a stile, walked across a recreation ground and a patch of bracken beyond, to a steep rocky slope beside the course and just above an old mine.  This was a garden of flowers, with Nottingham catchfly the most notable, but also much common and hoary rock-rose, bloody cranesbill, ploughman’s spikenard, yellowwort, small scabious, western and confused eyebrights, wild madder and a few pyramidal orchids and burnet rose.  There was a small bush with just leafy sprigs which was not easy to recognise but turned out to be a bird-sown strawberry-tree far from its native Irish haunts.  There were also bird-sown cotoneasters, both small-leaved and wall.  We returned to the green and continued up the road past a tram station to the turn off for St.Tudno’s church on the east side of the Orme.  We could find no trace of the native wild cotoneaster that used to grow by one of the walls of the churchyard.  We descended the steep slope to the Marine Drive and back to Llandudno.  We witnessed five or six peregrines flying and calling at the top of the cliffs, perhaps a newly fledged brood.  Kittiwakes were also nesting and fulmars frequently passed.              On 15 June 2013 we revisited Great Orme on a sunny, though windy, day, with a BSBI party led by Professor Tim Rich.  This time we concentrated on the south-facing cliffs below the upper car park and the nature reserve at Maes-y-facrell.  On the cliffs was a strong cage enclosing a specimen of wild cotoneaster protected from grazing, but we saw more uncaged specimens, both original and planted, in the fenced reserve.  On the cliffs were also plants of dark red helleborine still in bud, rock whitebeam, lesser hawkbit, various rare hawkweeds Hieracium brittanicoides, cambricum (largest population of just 3 sites in Wales), and vagense, and more hoary rock-rose, bloody cranesbill and white horehound.  In the reserve was also a colony of the alien perennial nipplewort.  Although this was an "off-year" for the biennially-flowering western gorse, of which there are plenty of bushes here, we did manage to find a single flower!

Hieracium cambricum Hieracium vagense Western gorse