The Natural History of Wales

By William. M. Condry

This book is an attempt to survey the natural history of the whole of Wales. It therefore covers such areas as Snowdonia and the Brecon Beacons as well as the spectacularly beautiful Pembrokeshire coast and the less well-known but no less interesting areas of mid-Wales.

Wales is a country of great geographical and biological diversity, a largely mountainous land whose eastern scarps overlook the richer plains of Mercia. William Condry is an acute observer of the potentialities of terrain, and particularly in respect of wildlife habitats. The author of the distinguished volume on Snowdonia in the New Naturalist series, he is the ideal person to write about one of the best-known and best-loved parts of Great Britain.

This book is an attempt to survey the natural history of the whole of Wales. It therefore covers such areas as Snowdonia and the Brecon Beacons as well as the spectacularly beautiful Pembrokeshire coast and the less well-known but no less interesting areas of mid-Wales.

Describing each kind of terrain in turn, William Condry has explored and surveyed the face of this unique land as few others have done. Beginning with corries, crags and summits, he goes on to consider moorlands, mires and conifers. There then follow rivers, lakes and marshes; the native woodlands; limestone flora; farmlands, villages and estates; the industrial scene; and finally perhaps the most striking terrain of all, the coast. This encompasses polders, peatlands, beaches, dunes and estuaries as well as cliffs, headlands and island.

Within each of these areas William Condry brings a wealth of experience to bear on the more obvious aspects of wildlife - flowering plants and ferns, mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians. Important rarities such as the Snowdon lily or the red kite are, of course, included, but always with the intention of establishing a proper respect for their conservation.

Affectionate and thoroughly informative, full of insights into local history and always a delight to read, this is a magnificent introduction to Wales and its countryside.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Aug 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9780007406548

Book preview

Collins New Naturalist Library

66

The Natural History Of Wales

William Condry M.A., M.Sc.

EDITORS

Margaret Davies, C.B.E., M.A., Ph.D.

John Gilmour, M.A., V.M.H.

Kenneth Mellanby, C.B.E., Sc.D.

PHOTOGRAPHIC EDITOR

Eric Hosking, F.R.P.S.

The aim of this series is to interest the general reader in the wild life of Britain by recapturing the inquiring spirit of the old naturalists. The Editors believe that the natural pride of the British public in the native fauna and flora, to which must be added concern for their conservation, is best fostered by maintaining a high standard of accuracy combined with clarity of exposition in presenting the results of modern scientific research.

To the memory of EDWARD LHUYD (c. 1660-1709) who, had he been spared a few more years, would have given the world a very fine Natural History of Wales

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Editors

Editors’ Preface

Author’s Preface

CHAPTER 1

CORRIES, CRAGS AND SUMMITS

CHAPTER 2

MOORLANDS, MIRES AND CONIFERS.

CHAPTER 3

RIVERS, LAKES AND MARSHES

CHAPTER 4

THE NATIVE WOODLANDS

CHAPTER 5

THE FLORA OF THE LIMESTONE

CHAPTER 6

FARMLANDS, VILLAGES AND ESTATES

CHAPTER 7

THE INDUSTRIAL SCENE

CHAPTER 8

THE COAST – I PEAT LANDS, POLDERS, BEACHES, DUNES AND ESTUARIES

CHAPTER 9

THE COAST – II CLIFFS, HEADLANDS AND ISLANDS

APPENDIX I

RESERVES AND PLACES OF INTEREST

APPENDIX II

GLOSSARY

Bibliography

Index

Plates

Copyright

About the Publisher

EDITORS’ PREFACE

WALES is a country of great geographical and biological diversity, a largely mountainous land whose eastern scarps overlook the richer plains of Mercia. Twelve hundred years ago King Offa of Mercia demarcated Welsh territory by a dyke which topped the eastern scarps and which is partly followed by the modern boundary of Wales. Offa’s Dyke may have curtailed Welsh cattle raids in the eighth century but it has never prevented invasion from Mercia. From the Norman invaders to the modern tourist and settler, routes along the main rivers which flow eastwards from the slopes of Plynlimon have been used to penetrate the mountain heart of Wales and to find, beyond it, rewarding territory on its coastal fringes.

William Condry, a Mercian but no feudal baron, is an acute observer of the potentialities of terrain, though largely in respect of wildlife habitats. Far more sympathetic to native traditions than most of those who have settled in Wales over the centuries, he first came into Wales in the 1930s and walked over the Plynlimon moorlands observing their birds. In 1949 he became a teacher at Eglwysfach, a village on the south side of the delectable estuary of the Dyfi from which there are wide views into the craggy mountains of Merioneth. He still lives by the Dyfi estuary and though he has not taught in the local classroom for many years, he has passed on his knowledge of natural history through his very readable books, through his Country Diary paragraphs which have appeared in The Guardian newspaper since 1957 and through his broadcasts and lectures to a wide public.

Birds and conservation are among his main interests and he was soon convinced of the need to protect the estuarine birds of the lower Dyfi and to preserve their habitat. The establishment of the Ynys-hir reserve of the RSPB was largely his work and during his years as its warden he did great work on behalf of its wildlife. With others, he helped to set up the observatory on Bardsey and his detailed knowledge of the mainland and island birds of Wales, and their needs, made available to the Welsh Committee of the Nature Conservancy during 1952–58, persuaded that body to designate several of the nature reserves of Wales.

Readers of this volume will soon discern that Bill Condry has explored and surveyed the face of Wales as few others have done. His delightful evocations of habitats are obviously based on personal observation, often in difficult terrain. This biographer of Thoreau has sought and appreciated the solitudes, and they are many in Wales, and worth seeking. Familiarity with a host of earlier writings is evident in his work. In this volume the host is led by Giraldus Cambrensis whose itinerary through Wales, made in 1188, is as illuminating, but a good deal less modest, than the present work. Bill Condry, unlike Gerald the Welshman, has never aspired to be Bishop of St David’s, but like him is among the leading topographers who have described Wales. His chapters on her varied habitats are enhanced by first-hand accurate observations expressed in non-technical prose.

The New Naturalist series celebrated its coming of age with Condry’s The Snowdonia National Park. The present wider-ranging book is in the same tradition, provocative of thought on landscapes and their make-up, flora and fauna, including man and his activities, and, by the example of its author, encouraging others to observe, note and learn as they walk in Wales. We are fortunate in having another book in this series from an author so widely known and with so wide a knowledge of Wales and its natural history.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

THIS is a preface to a book which itself is little more than a preface. The natural history of even so small a country as Wales is inexhaustible in its scope, and a whole encyclopedia on the subject could still leave a good deal unsaid. So in this single volume I have had to keep to popular themes. Botanically this means the flowering plants and ferns. The animals I have chiefly mentioned are the mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians, so that apart from some of the more obvious insects, mostly butterflies and moths, I omit almost entirely the vast and wonderful world of the invertebrates. And when I reach the sea shore I scarcely dip a toe into the water: the rich marine biology of the long Welsh coastline I leave to other writers.

A difficulty that faces all who set out to describe a region’s natural history is what to say, or not to say, about rarities. No author with a proper respect for conservation wants to advertise the sites of uncommon species. Yet a natural history of Wales which said nothing about the Snowdon lily or the red kite would be a very odd sort of book. So where I mention rare plants or animals I do so in the hope of enlisting sympathy for their protection. But specimen collecting is, alas, still rampant. This was evident when the rosy marsh moth, believed extinct in Britain for over a century, was found in west Wales in the 1960s. It had scarcely been discovered when lepidopterists were swooping on it from all directions. The eggs of rare birds and the young of falcons are similarly threatened. Nor does the flora fare any better. The Snowdon lily is thought to be ever declining because collectors cannot keep their fingers off it. For the same reason the Killarney and woodsia ferns are on the edge of extinction in Wales.

But the fate of the rarities is only a fraction of the general plight of nature. Year by year the living space available to wildlife gets less as man increasingly invades the countryside with houses, motels, caravans, chalets and ever larger farm buildings, factories, power stations, roads and reservoirs. Destruction of especially sensitive habitats is caused by the dumping of waste materials into wetlands, by replacing broad-leaved woods with conifers, and by straightening rivers and shaving the trees off their banks. Many agricultural practices, engendered by the ceaseless demands made on farmers to increase production, can be very damaging to nature: the draining of damp fields, ploughing of old grasslands, reclaiming wild corners, removing hedges, discharging effluents into waterways, the large-scale use of chemicals and the misuse of strychnine and other poisons. Faced by so many threats to wildlife, the conservation movement clearly needs to be as strong as possible and it can be helped by us all if we will support such bodies as the naturalists’ trusts, natural history societies, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the World Wildlife Fund, the National Trust, the Council for the Protection of Rural Wales and similar organisations which depend on voluntary support.

I have written this book in the hope of adding a little to people’s understanding of the place of wildlife in the countryside, and of bringing to their attention the need for ever greater efforts to protect nature not only in reserves but wherever else possible. Many wordy arguments – philosophical, moral and utilitarian – have been advanced to justify the conservation of nature. But surely it is sufficient to say that when man destroys wildlife and wild habitats he is vandalising something of enormous interest and beauty and so is grievously impoverishing the world and his own life in it.

Writing the book has been a voyage of discovery and one of its pleasures has been the help so generously given me along the route. My sincere thanks go to various members of staff of the Nature Conservancy Council, the University of Wales, the National Library of Wales, the National Museum of Wales, the Countryside Commission, the RSPB, the Field Studies Council, the Forestry Commission, the National Trust and the CPRW. Fellow members of naturalists’ trusts, the BSBI and the BTO have also been very willing to share their knowledge. In addition I am happy to thank the following for their special help: Dr Richard Arnold, Eric Bartlett, Derek Baylis, Peter Benoit, A. O. Chater, Ann Connolly, Susan Cowdy, Dr Margaret Davies, Peter Davis, J. W. Donovan, Frank Emery, Christopher Fuller, Arthur ap Gwyn, Brian Hawkes, Mary Hignett, Dr P. C. Hunt, Dr Nancy Kirk, Mr & Mrs G. C. Lambourne, P. M. Miles, Edgar Milne-Redhead, Dr K. O’Hara, Libby Lenton, Dr C. Pennycuick, Doris Pugh, Evan Roberts, Col H. M. Salmon, P. D. Sells, Dr Derek Thomas, R. S. Thomas, Mrs I. M. Vaughan and A. E. Wade.

To two devoted conservationists no longer with us I shall ever be indebted: E. H. Chater for his wise counsel on matters of ecology; and Capt H. R. H. Vaughan who was so knowledgeable about the history of rural Wales.

Finally I am grateful to the Welsh Arts Council for a grant which enabled me to have time in the field I could not otherwise have managed.

FIG. 1.

Pre–1974 counties. The old counties of Wales remain of natural history interest because so many records refer to them. The numbers are those given them in 1873 for the purpose of biological recording. The system is still in use but is now supplemented by the grid-square method.

FIG. 2.

Post–1974 counties.

CHAPTER 1

CORRIES, CRAGS AND SUMMITS

I STARTED to make notes for this book late of an August afternoon on the top of Y Garn, a peak that stands solitary along the Glyder range in Snowdonia. And I began quite unexpectedly because, until half an hour before, it was raining hard, a cold wind blew and the idea of writing a single word out of doors would have been laughable. Yet miraculously there I was, sitting in the sun with my back against an already warm dry rock and clouds were unravelling off the mountains all round. The northern sky was blue right away to beyond Holyhead and soon the south would be just as halcyon. Such astonishing swift changes are unbelievable until they happen. But they are a quintessential part of our upland weather.

I had come up through the mist by way of Cwm Idwal, following a track grievously worn by years of trampling. A line of girls, despite their orange waterproofs, were only dim shapes before me along the nature trail round the lake. They were, I suppose, a school party out to study the lake vegetation (the water lobelia (Lobelia dortmanna) still hung a few last violet flowers above the surface). Perhaps too they intended to look for geological features and were hoping that the fog would lift to let them see how beautifully the rocks are downfolded in the cliffs of this cwm.

It was then that it began to rain heavily and if I’d been alone I daresay I would have turned back, discouraged by the water seeping coldly down my neck. But if these girls could press on through the murk in such earnest pursuit of knowledge what excuse had I for giving up? And as we went on a quite marvellous thing happened. Out of the fog and the rain from somewhere up near the crags of the Devil’s Kitchen, which the Welsh call Twll Du (‘black chasm’), there swept a flock of large black birds all calling with excitement – a rather dreamlike experience for me because in my many visits to Cwm Idwal I had never seen more than two or three choughs there before. And now here were thirty of them settling on rocks on both sides of the trail or walking tamely about the sheep-nibbled sward.

FIG. 3.

Wales: showing some of the localities of special natural history interest and the 100 km grid-squares. Naturalists’ trust reserves are almost entirely omitted.

Sadly I observed that the crocodile of girls had not paused at all, not one pair of eyes had turned to look at the birds, no ears had heeded the cheering calls. For these children, as also for their teacher, these lovely, noisy crows of the mountains with their sensitive, ant-seeking, bright-red bills and their equally striking red legs, just did not exist. But this lapse we must forgive because Cwm Idwal is classic ground for lack of observation. Here in his time came Charles Darwin and totally missed what is so obvious to any schoolchild today (once it is pointed out) – that this cwm is one huge piece of evidence, in the shape of moraines, scratched stones, perched boulders, screes and cirques, that a vast weight and depth of ice and frozen rocks once forced a way through here and down to Ogwen and beyond.

From the lake I turned up the slithering, crumbling track that goes for the Devil’s Kitchen, a track that bore me laboriously upwards through a wilderness of mist and block scree until quite abruptly the cliffs were right overhead. I looked up and up the vertical grey walls and saw how, as nearly always, the plants grew thickest round the lower skirts – luxurious waving sheets of lady’s mantle (Alchemilla vulgaris), roseroot (Sedum rosea), northern bed-straw (Galium boreale) and others that are faithful to ledges where perennial water comes oozing from deep in the rock, collecting nutritious minerals on its way. Up higher the cliffs looked harder, showing no spring lines, and plant life was very much sparser. Yet even up there a scatter of rowan trees (Sorbus aucuparia) (planted in the droppings of ring ouzels?) had managed to anchor themselves.

For twenty minutes the rain had eased but now it became torrential and I crouched from it under an overhang. A group of heavily rucksacked hill walkers clattered past down the scree hurrying to get out of the weather. One of them shouted to me that conditions on top were ‘just terrible’. Then their figures faded into the mist below and I was alone with the lichened rocks, the dripping mosses and the rain. It was rather special rain this, being the first I had seen for many weeks, the lowlands having had a long spell of drought. But when I got home that night I found the world down there just as parched and dusty as ever. So perhaps it was worth all the water down my neck to be reminded how unique is the mountain weather and why it is that the mountain plants keep so happy, green and flowering in a summer when the rest of the world is in agony from sunburn and thirst.

The rain stopped and a wren sang loudly from the crags as I groped upwards towards the summit ridge and Glyder Fawr in the thickest cloud I ever remember. Very soon I lost the track and found myself floundering into the shallows of Llyn y Cwn. Then after more blundering I struck a track which the north wind on my face told me must be the path up to Y Garn. So, grateful for any track at all, I abandoned all hope of Glyder Fawr and headed for Y Garn instead, noting how, about half-way up, the ground vegetation changed quite abruptly from grassland to broad mats of crowberry (Empetrum nigrum) – a sharpness of zonation common enough on many of the world’s mountains but much less usual in Wales because here man and his animals have so interfered with the natural order of things.

It was just as I got to the summit that the cloud quite suddenly was gone, every rock and grass leaf gleamed in the sunlight and all about me the mountain world was unfolding in beauty. Y Garn’s peak is a gritty dome of rough, deeply fissured, pallid rocks almost devoid of soil. They are touched lightly by patches of moss, some bright-green, some olive, some black. But flowering plants are miserable and sparse: struggling wisps of bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus), meagre stems of sheep’s fescue (Festuca ovina) and a spike or two of stiff sedge (Carex bigelowii) that is so faithful to the very crests of mountains. No ferns except a few lonely parsley ferns (Cryptogramma crispa). Encrusting lichens also colour the rocks, some black, some yellow-green but mostly white. Below the summit the ground drops steeply east into the shadows of Cwm Clyd; and on the west the land soon falls away into the Pass of Llanberis, one of those deep and narrow valleys that are the secret of Snowdonia’s charm. For their deepness and narrowness mean that the peaks stand very near to each other, giving the illusion of a much greater mountain region.

The clarity of that sun-filled hour was such as often comes just after rain. Through my binoculars I could make out fine detail and almost identify plants in the cliffs of Glyder Fawr over a mile away, celebrated cliffs that are a glorious hugger-mugger of the igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks that make Snowdonia so beloved among geologists and naturalists. North-west I looked to the Menai Strait, then across all Anglesey which is a gently undulating, near sea-level platform built mainly of planed down rocks that were immeasurably ancient before those of Snowdonia even began to be formed particle by particle on the bed of the ocean. Turning east I could see, beyond Nant Ffrancon, the shoulders of the high Carneddau – another vast complexity of lavas, dolerites, slates and sandstones.

In the south-west the finest hill group of all – Snowdon, Lliwedd, Crib y Ddysgl and Crib Goch – was shedding its last cloud rags and revealing one by one all the peaks and peaklets, the cirques, knife edges, cliffs and screes that are part of the story of the building, dissolving and rebuilding of the mountains. When you learn that Snowdon is a surviving fragment not of a huge upfold but of a huge downfold in the rocks then you begin to grasp faintly at the immense volume of rock that has decayed and gone with the ages. I remember that in my history lessons at school we spent weeks on something called the dissolution of the monasteries. What a triviality! From up there on Y Garn, or any other height, you can see something truly significant – the dissolution of the mountains.

SUMMIT CONDITIONS

My wet scramble up to Y Garn that August day was a common experience. For in Wales, on average, August is not one of the driest months and Welsh mountaineering tales have always been full of summer drenchings. Snowdon, thrusting its high brow against damp Atlantic winds most days of the year, is an unrivalled cloud breeder; and its rainfall, probably over 5,000 mm (200 in.) a year, is exceptional even for Wales. But most Welsh summits must have over 2,500 mm (100 in.) and the rest of the higher uplands over 2,000 mm (80 in.). This means that where the rocks are both porous and base-rich there is ever a seepage of water through them and a rapid feeding of minerals to the plants and animals of cliff ledges. Certainly it is where you can see water oozing and dripping perennially down soft and friable crags that you are likely to find the greatest variety of species.

So much for gullies and crags. But what about the very tops of the mountains? That is where life is really up against it, up there where not only rainfall but also wind-blow and frost shatter are truly formidable and the terrain may be soil-less, skeleton country like the summit of Glyder which is a desert of rock slabs and ruin. In such a world the only plants are those which ask very little of life – a few lichens, mosses, clubmosses, dwarf willow and a meagre gathering of ferns, grasses, rushes and sedges – the flora of real hardship. But it doesn’t do to generalise too much about the upland weather. For the truth is that there is not one climate but an infinity of extremely local climates. Mountain plants and animals have their various ways of keeping out of trouble – it is almost their whole life’s business – and they have learned to cope with appalling summit conditions by deftly taking advantage of every slight hope of shelter. They crouch behind boulders, retreat into crevices, hide under stones, exposing themselves as little as possible to wind, rain, ice, snow or drought. Survival is therefore quite feasible even where to our eyes a terrain can seem totally unlivable.

Perhaps from nature’s viewpoint the most trying feature of Welsh mountain weather is not the excessive rain, the occasional attack of deadly cold nor the rare summer heat-wave: it is simply its changeability. An average summer is a rapid alternation of cool wetness and warm sunshine; and in a typical winter a few mild days follow stretches of frosty days all through from November to May. Such weather that is neither one thing nor the other must be quite unnerving for alpine plants and animals which would be so much happier with a long steady warmth in summer and a reliable snow cover in winter. Maybe there was once such a climate on the Welsh mountains and perhaps many of the arctic-alpines now confined (in Britain) to Scotland once flourished in Wales. But if so it was very long ago.

Some of us may be sad that the top of Snowdon has so long been disfigured by a café and a railway, and that if this fine peak had to fall into the hands of developers it is regrettable they did not incorporate an observatory in their building like the one that operated on the top of Ben Nevis from 1883 to 1904 and gave the world much valuable information about Scottish mountain weather. It was pioneered by a strong-ankled enthusiast who in the summers of 1881 and 1882 plodded daily to the summit of Nevis to read the instruments. No such hero as far as I know has ever done the same for Snowdon. But there was an artist, H. B. Biden, who must have been an ardent student of temperatures on one of Snowdon’s neighbours. ‘Mr Biden’, runs a report of 1877, ‘keeps a thermometer on the top of Glyder Fach which acts as a lodestone to take him to those heights in all weathers’. I wish I knew more about this stalwart for he seems to have made countless ascents of Snowdon too, in order to draw meticulous panoramas which were published about 1874 under the title: ‘All Round Snowdon: the Summit, with Names and Altitudes of all the Principal Mountains’.

MAN

How in all the ages has man fared amid the harshness and poverty of these rocky, unwelcoming uplands? If we begin right back when the glaciers had only just vanished we can count him out entirely. Even in lowland south England his numbers at that time were scant and we can assume that only a few hardy explorers ever ventured up into the tundra world of highland Britain. After the tundra, as the ice age lost more and more of its grip, came the great spreads of pine and birch. But even then why should hunters have penetrated far into the upland forests when those in the lowlands provided all the game they needed? Through the long ages down to the end of the Neolithic it seems likely that man had little business to attend to on the higher uplands of Wales.

But by the time that the Stone Age merged into the Bronze (round 2000 BC) man’s population had increased and the climate had long been excellent. This was a period when men (and trees also) surged up into the hills perhaps as never before or since in postglacial times, reaching high plateaus like that of Plynlimon where at over 600 m (2,000 ft) you can still see Bronze Age cairns and search hopefully in the peat hags from which winter rains and bog bursts occasionally flush out little, neatly worked flint arrow-heads. Up there too the peat yields fragments of the birches of that time, not sufficient to suggest a forest but enough to prove that at least a few isolated trees once grew so far above the present birch limit.

So in a climate more genial than ours, man evidently flourished, at least in summer, on uplands whose sparse trees were easily cleared for living space. But by about 500 BC (so goes the evidence of ancient pollen preserved in bogs) the golden age was losing its glory. The sun shone less, the hills retreated more often into coldness and gloom, and ever deepening peat spread over much of the uplands. Man and forest alike retired to lower levels and when the first Celtic invaders arrived, bringing in the Iron Age, they built their hill forts and established their cultivations no higher than the semi-uplands. What they did bring to the hills were new names – the fine names by which Welsh mountains, rivers, lakes and other natural features are still known and which go back not only far in time but also in space, for many of them are echoes of names from those parts of the Continent where the Celts originated.

SHEEP AND GOATS

What is certain about man’s activities in the uplands is that he has always been a dedicated destroyer of woodlands to make way for pasture and that by the Middle Ages, perhaps much earlier, the numbers of sheep and goats grazing and browsing had completely modified the vegetation. Not that we can say in detail what the mountain vegetation was like in its primal state. But the general effects of grazing are so well known that we can be sure that the upland plant life (and therefore its animal life) was far more varied than it is today. Richer for instance in tall, large-leaved, edible plants such as hawkweeds and knapweeds which are soon destroyed by grazing because they lack the cut-and-come-again resilience that enables some of the tougher grasses to survive any amount of nibbling.

Infant trees suffered similarly. For though the vileness of the climate after the Bronze Age did much to lower the natural tree limit, trees have been far more scourged by man and his animals than by any change in the weather. The many rowans and occasional aspens (Populus tremula) that bristle out of the cliffs of high corries are evidence enough that they completely accept the climate up there and would be scattered elsewhere in the uplands if it were not for the sheep.

Not all the mountain grasses stand up equally to the ravages of grazing. The sheep’s fescue is so named because sheep prefer it to coarser grasses. But because they persistently select it from among the tougher species the fescue gets weakened and its competitors take advantage. So wherever grazing is intensive the sheepwalks become increasingly invaded by mat-grass (Nardus stricta). There is another long-term effect of sheep grazing on the uplands: in the form of meat, bone, muscle, fat, blood, sinew and wool the sheep industry removes annually a great amount of mineral and organic wealth and puts little back. The mountain sheep farming of the past has therefore to be seen as a centuries-long process of soil impoverishment.

Grazing animals enjoy variety in their diet. Just as cattle in a pasture will help themselves to leaves off the hedges so mountain sheep will venture as far as they can along plant-rich ledges, fascinated by the varied herbage whose scent comes on the breeze to their keen noses. But sheep climb only moderately well and quite often come to grief on slippery rocks. In Snowdonia it is along the feet of botanically rich crags – Ysgolion Duon for example – that you will find the greatest number of such sheep casualties.

Because sheep are so liable to climbing accidents the shepherds of Snowdonia have long looked with favour on the small troops of wild goats that pasture the mountain ledges, the belief being that by eating off the best of the cliff plants the goats remove temptation from the sheep. Can one wonder that mountain botanists are not in love with mountain goats? Still, things are not as bad as they were. Till the end of the eighteenth century there were far more goats roaming the uplands than there are today. Not that any of them are genuine wild goats. They may look just like ibexes, especially the billies with their long curved horns outlined magnificently on rocky skylines; but in fact they are merely goats gone wild – the descendants of domesticated flocks. You will meet with them – but no, that makes them sound altogether too chummy. Let me say rather that you will glimpse them in the distance on many a north Wales height from Snowdon to Cader Idris.

The goats’ decline (c.1750–1800) was explained in Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary (1833): ‘They are no longer considered as forming part of the farmers’ stock, their value having been greatly lessened on account of their destructiveness to young plantations and on the general disuse of the bushy wigs which were usually made from the hair of these shaggy animals’. So, the victims of changing fashion, the upland goats would now be long forgotten if a few of them had not opted for wildness and the summits. But depressed by the cold wet upland winters, the poverty of the diet and the competition of the sheep, is it surprising that these goats, which are by origin Asians not Europeans, do not really flourish?

Because, after many centuries of grazing, the mountain vegetation is so changed and degenerate, a naturalist might well wish there could be at least one upland nature reserve from which man’s animals would be excluded. Say Glyder Fawr and Glyder Fach along with Cwm Idwal and Cwm Bochlwyd. I know that Cwm Idwal is officially a nature reserve already. But when you get there and see the sheep grazing all over it you find the title questionable. The dominance of sheep throughout the length and breadth of Wales is so absolute that surely just one mountain could be saved from them and given the chance of getting back to something like its true and natural self?

PLANT LIFE

For a look in more detail at the mountain flora let us begin with Thomas Johnson, ‘citizen and apothecarye of London’, for he was the first to report anything worthwhile about the natural history of the Welsh mountains. It was in July, 1639, that he came with three companions to botanise in north Wales. They went up Snowdon in the mist and as this ascent was such a landmark in botanical history (no other British mountain had yet been reported on by botanists) it would be fascinating to know which route the party followed. But as their starting point was Caernarvon they probably went by way of Llanberis to Clogwyn Du’r Arddu. Their finding of northern rockcress (Cardaminopsis petraea) suggests this for it is remarkably abundant there. From Clogwyn’s great cliffs it would be logical to go to the top of Snowdon where perhaps they found their dwarf willow (Salix herbacea). Thence we can guess they ventured down the cool green terraces of Clogwyn y Garnedd to discover the alpine saxifrage (Saxifraga nivalis) and other treasures. Certainly, whichever way they went, they chose a botanists’ way, scrambling precariously up and down wet gullies and across screes. For had they kept to the safety of hard dry rocks they would never have seen roseroot, mountain sorrel (Oxyria digyna), moss campion (Silene acaulis), Alpine saw-wort (Saussureaalpina) and (what naturally surprised them) two plants which they had always thought of as sea cliff species – thrift (Armeria maritima) and sea campion (Silene maritima).

Were it not for his list of plants, Mercurius Botanicus, published in 1641, Johnson would now be forgotten for he was killed in the Civil War only three years later. But carrying on where he left off come other more famous names. John Ray botanised on Snowdon and Cader Idris in 1658. And four years later he was back in Wales again with his friend Francis Willughby. I like to think of these two, later to be among the most celebrated naturalists of their time, scrambling up Snowdon’s corries in clouds and rain. It brings them nearer to us, makes them more alive. Afterwards though he never returned to Wales, Ray continued to collect information about Welsh plants from others now in the field, notably Edward Lhuyd (1660–1709), a Welshman who from his youth was devoted to upland botany, though just when he first went to the mountains we do not know. His earliest recorded visit to Snowdon is that of August 24, 1682, when amongst other good things he found juniper (Juniperus communis), purple saxifrage, moss campion, Welsh poppy (Meconopsis cambrica) and holly fern (Polystichum lonchitis). But his best discovery that day was alpine mouse-ear (Cerastium alpinum) which in