What it does is highlight is the botanical diversity of this significant site, along with the invertebrates and geology for which it has been designated. Whether it is sufficient to stop the damaging actions that have plagued the site since open access was granted, only time will tell. Acknowledgements I wish to thank Jenny Towill and the Anglesey Local Biodiversity Partnership for covering the basic expenses of materials and transport; the Barron Hill Estate for their help and enthusiasm; Mr Emyr Williams for providing invaluable assistance in getting equipment to site; Miss Kira Lovatt for getting soaked to the skin on the day and Ecoscope for providing time out to do this work without fee.
Carmarthenshire Platanthera x hybrida (P. chlorantha x P. bifolia) in a Garden Meadow in Cardiganshire Steve Chambers Our house in Capel Bangor has a longish back garden by courtesy of the builders having run out of money, so the story goes, before the planned parallel rear row of houses could be started. Fortunately, they never were. This was back in the early 1960s, and, as luck would have it, the piece of grassland so enclosed from the original field was fairly species-rich and unimpacted by modern agriculture. It quickly became my botanical playground, or in modern parlance, an outdoor laboratory for growing and watching at close-quarters through the seasons all manner of things green, and not so green in respect of the soil fungi. Since 1999 the grassland has been aesthetically exploited as a mini-hay meadow operating under a strict set of rules, which permit however the introduction of both British native and non-native meadow species. Keen to increase its contingent of orchids, in August 2005 on a stop off at the Cae Blaen-dyffryn (Plantlife) nature reserve in Carmarthenshire, I collected a single green Platanthera (Butterfly-orchid) capsule from an infructescence growing a short way into the main field above the road at c. SN605442. Then later the same month I sprinkled the seed onto the garden meadow post-cut, more in hope than expectation as the capsule appeared unripe. In June 2009 on one of my regular inspection strolls down the garden I was given a jolt by the sudden sight of a single flowering Platanthera spike standing proudly in the middle of the meadow, the moment inducing the kind of thrill known only to botanists. The following year the thrill tripled, and soon after the colony plateaued at a mean of c. 10 flowering BSBI Welsh Bulletin No. 109 March 2022
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