Wybunbury Moss National Nature Reserve,Wybunbury, Cheshire.
N 53° 02.883 W 002° 27.567
30U E 536236 N 5877752
The reserve is located 4 miles south of Crewe, near to the village of Wybunbury.
Waymark Code: WMTW8T
Location: West Midlands, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 01/13/2017
Views: 5
Wybunbury Moss National Nature Reserve is situated in south Cheshire, at the centre of the ‘Meres and Mosses’ Natural Area, where it forms part of a series of peat bogs or ‘Mosses’.
Ice movement and erosion in the last Ice Age scraped a series of depressions in the landscape that it covered. Over time, some of these hollows filled with water to form meres (large lakes) whilst others filled with peat to form mosses.
Wybunbury Moss is special in that subsequent subsidence of the rocks underlying the peat-filled basin has left a raft of peat floating on an underground lake forming a schwingmoor. A schwingmoor (German for swinging bog, which describes the movement of this type of moss) is a raft of peat which floats on top of an underground lake.
They are more common in Northern Europe, however Wybunbury Moss is one of only 3 examples of these floating bogs in the UK known to have formed in this way.
The peat raft is carpeted in sphagnum moss, along with cotton sedge, cranberry, bog rosemary, white-beaked sedge and the insect-eating sundew.
The Moss is also important for its invertebrate populations for which it is one of the most notable sites in Cheshire. A huge species list includes 2 rare spiders and a leaf beetle - Cryptocephalus decemmaculatus - which is not found anywhere else in England.
The peat raft is surrounded by reedswamp, woodland and meadows where marsh violet and heath-spotted orchid can be found.
The site is now managed by English Nature. A leaflet with information about the site can be downloaded from the following link. (
visit link)