Sphagnum quinquefarium Five-ranked Bog-moss

An autoicous bog-moss which grows on well-drained acidic slopes in deciduous woodland and sometimes on open banks, mountainside and heathland slopes. It is not a peat-forming species and it never occurs in bogs. The green cushions flecked with pink are made up of plants with five branches per fascicle, three of which are spreading. The branches usually have a distinctly angular profile. It is a Suboceanic Boreal-montane species with a western and northern distribution in Britain where it often forms extensive carpets on sessile-oak woodland slopes. It is found throughout Wales and reaches its southern limit there in the Vale of Neath, where it is found on the steep-sloping oak woodlands of the Pyrddin Valley. Sporophyte capsules are occasional in late summer and autumn.