Introduction to Wale’s water plants

4^th November 2013

It's been more than a month in the Bangor University. This month provided me many opportunities to visit various types of wetlands in the Wales. However, for the first time I visited Treborth Botanic garden with primary focus on plants of wetland's.

Treborth Botanic garden

Treborth Botanic Garden is owned and managed by Bangor University from 1960. The garden covers an area of 18 hectares on the shores of the Menai Strait. Though the garden is open to public, it is equally used for the research and teaching activities by various departments of the University. Similarly, our purpose of visiting the garden was to get more knowledge about aquatic plants of the Wales.

Wooden logs providing support to constructed dipping pond

Around 10 am, we reached Treborth and had a meeting with prof Nigel Brown in the lab. After having quick introduction of plants kingdom, we moved outside to collect samples.  It was exciting to see the collection of native plants from the mountains of Snowdonia and coastal habitats of Wales in one garden. The garden aims to provide opportunities for study and experimentation with flora from many ecological niches including freshwater and seashore.

Nigel Brown introducing us with Typha

 By the end of the visit we had collected many plants for the identification in the laboratory. Now, it was time for us to study plant samples in the lab.  We spent around 3 hours and made a list of plants collected from the garden. Given below is the list of plants collected from the garden:  Juncus errusus, Gypsywort (Lycopus europaeus), Ivy Leaved Duckweed, Common Duckweed, RigidHornwort, Floating sweet grass, Geater Spearwort, Water Mint and Water Starwort.

Malltraeth Marsh survey

After lab work, we headed towards the Malltraeth Marsh around 3 pm. Malltraeth Marsh is a large marsh area in Anglesey, North Wales. It is reclaimed from estuarine marshes after the construction of the Malltraeth. It is also known as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in West Gwynedd. It is famous for the breeding ground of various bird communities.

 Malltraeth Marsh overview

 Along with bird diversity, this Marsh provides habitat to floras. The marsh is rich with many plants including reed canary-grass, Juncus, horsetail (Equisetum fluviatile), potamogeton, Juncus effuses, water-plantain, Typha latifolia, branched bur-reed, Club rush, Phragmites, bog bean, sparganium, willow and reed sweet-grass. Spiked water-milfoil, blunt-leaved pondweed, horned pondweed, common male fern are also reported in the marsh land, apart from rare species of flowering-rush, water-violet and marsh stitchwort. 

Juncus effusus

Phragmites

Typha

Knowing aquatic plants along with their characteristics was definitely huge chance for us. Along with observing various marsh plants, we also got an opportunity to see flocks of starlings when we were coming back .