SHEATHED PASPALUM AT GURNET HEAD

Pioneer growth of sheathed paspalum grass (Paspalum vaginatum) colonising bare sand and rock at Gurnet Head, Cooper's Island Nature Reserve, St. George's Parish, Bermuda.

 

This grass spreads out over bare substrates with long runners (stolons), and later thickens upwards into dense darker clumps and tangled stands. The colours are slightly edited to bring out the contrasts but are not digitally enhanced. But I deliberately took this with back-lighting from the late afternoon sun and this made the stems appear more reddish and the grass blades more bright and yellowish. The grass is salt-tolerant and is growing here quite close the edge of the sea, and at high water in rough weather, it will receive considerable amounts of fine salty spray from the nearby waves.

 

This photo was taken at Gurney Head in area 1 at the southernmost point on the map of Cooper's Island Nature Reserve and neighbouring areas, during an Audubon Society of Bermuda outing to Cooper's Island Nature Reserve, Bermuda, to spot cahows.

 

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SHEATHED PASPALUM

Paspalum vaginatum Sw.

This species is native to the Americas, It is not listed as native to Bermuda but Bermuda lies close to or within the native range of this grass. It has also been introduced to numerous other places around the world, often as cultivars for turf, so it has many vernacular names in many languages. Around Bermuda, through its salt tolerance, it typically occurs in and around salt marshes, marine ponds and close to the sea shore, and can colonise rocky and sandy habitats with little soil.

----- Pettit, D. (Ed.), 2012. Bermuda plant finder. Indigenous and invasive plants of Bermuda. Government of Bermuda. Ministry of the Environment and Planning. Department of Conservation Services. 207 pp. Downloadable pdf from www.conservation.bm/

----- Watlington, C., 1996. Bermuda's botanical wonderland. Macmillan, London. 128 pp.

----- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paspalum_vaginatum

 

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COOPER'S ISLAND

 

Huge man-made changes affected all this area during the 20th Century, through the construction of a US Air Base (KIndley), a US Naval Air Station, Bermuda's civil airport, and various installations including a NASA tracking station. Since the US forces left the base, a clean-up was carried out after some tricky negotiations. Apart from the civil airport and various residual buildings, the bases have now all gone. The lasting effect of all the military works was to make what were once separate islands (Cooper's Island, St. David's Island) into a single landmass. Following demolition of all the military installations, the whole area now includes the largest area of undeveloped land on Bermuda, the largest area of public parkland (Cooper's Island National Park) and the largest nature reserve (Cooper's Island Nature Reserve), the latter being committed to a major nature conservation and restoration programme.

 

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Photo

Brian Roy Rosen

Uploaded to Flickr November 27, 2013

© Darkroom Daze Creative Commons.

If you would like to use or refer to this image, please attribute.

ID: DSC_7953

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