Inchnadamph (Part 2)

 As promised, here is a bit more about the week at Inchnadamph.  On Thursday, we went to the coast to a beach called Clach Toll.  As I live 45 miles from the sea, coastal lichens are another group that I am not overly familiar with but there were plenty of helpful friends to point out interesting lichens. The day was windy but dry, and the views wonderful.

Clach Toll Beach

However, as warned in the last post, it took a while to get out of the car park! This was partly because there was a small hut with beach finds to look at and also some whale bones mounted at the side of the car park.  A notice said they were from a Fin whale that had been stranded on the beach. One of the bones was misidentified on the notice as a skull, when it was clearly a vertebra.  This did not escape the notice of two of the party who were pathologists! Bone is just another surface that lichens can make a home on.

Examining a whalebone

After a brief visit to the public toilet (more lichens on the brickwork!), we went down to the beach.  The red rocks were Lewisian gneiss which is 3.1 billion years old.

One coastal species not found far inland was Anaptychia runcinata which looks brown when dry but turns green when sprayed with water.

Anaptychia runcinata: dry (on left) and wet (on right)

Some snails had found a wet crack to huddle into away from the drying breeze.

Snail haven (heaven?)

 There was a stop for lunch (First rule of field work: never be separated from your packed lunch!).

Lunch on the rocks.

Round the corner from this lunch spot, I found a place where water ran down the rocks. This was mainly inhabited by jelly lichens (which I usually just admire and then move on, as I find them hard to ID),  but there was something I recognised at the top -  a cluster of small spotty lobes of Dermatocarpon miniatum.

Jelly lichens bracketed in red. Dermatocarpon circled in blue and shown in close up.

On Friday, I went to the graveyard at Elphin, just a few miles down the road.  I was ill-prepared as I forgot my phone (which I use to take pictures of the lichens I find). However, one of the group took some photos for me (and of me as it turned out).

The lichen I was interested in was the white one with black spots (apothecia).  The white one just above it is Ochrolechia parella or crab eye lichen. It has large apothecia with thick margins  and is one that you can name just by looking. The one with black spots could be lots of things so I took a small sample  and looked at it under the microscope when we got back.

The first job was to mount the small sample on a microscope slide to keep it still while I sectioned it - i.e. cut a thin slice so I could see the inside. Then the slice was put on another slide in a drop of water, covered by a thin square of glass (a cover slip) and put under the compound microscope where light was shone through it to reveal the inside structure. The see-though area is where the spores grow. The photo shows the three stages.

Sample - section - spores

The spores are the bobbly looking shapes on the right hand side of the photo.  Once you have spores, the next steps are to measure their length and width and to note the structure. The size was 30 x15 micrometres (written µm, pronounced microns). The structure is hard to make out, so the next step was to stain them so they are more visible.  This is done by adding some KOH, then fountain pen ink, then white vinegar.

spores

Now the spores are dyed blue and you can see that they look rather like squashed blackberries or hand grenades. (The big circle is just an air bubble.) This structure is termed muriform, meaning it is like a brick wall. This information led me to an ID of Rhizocarpon reductum (now renamed as Rehmia reducta). This is quite a common lichen, but it can appear in many different forms so it fools me every time! 

Another example of how the same species can appear in different guises, was seen when I sampled a lichen on a wall near the Lodge.

 The darker brown lichen on the right is Fuscidea cyathoides which is quite common on rocks, often forming mosaics. I thought the lighter brown lichen on the left might be a different species so took a sample to look at the spores.

Bean shaped spores, in water (left) and after applying KOH and Iodine (right)

The bean shaped spores meant that the lighter thallus was also Fuscidea cyathoides. As well as peering through microscopes in the evenings, we also had a couple of talks when people explained what they were working on. Josef (who had driven for 3 days from the Czech Rebublic to join us!) told us about his expedition to Scandinavia looking at lichens returning after glaciers retreat, and Dylan told us about his Ph.D. project collecting environmental DNA and comparing lichen species gathered this way with visual surveys. It wasn't all lichens though. One evening some of us had a delicious dinner out in Lochinver.

On Sunday, it was time to drive home and the weather turned dry and sunny!

Inchnadamph - or what do lichen enthusiasts do all week?(Part 1)

 As promised, here is a bit more about the week I spent at the British Lichen Society field meeting at Inchnadamph with other lichen enthusiasts. First of all, where is Inchnadamph?  It is on the NW coast of Scotland, inland from Lochinver and on the shores of Loch Assynt.  Its main claim to fame is its geology, something called The Moine Thrust, when 2 continents collided and the older rocks from one side were pushed over newer rocks on the other side. This caused confusion in late 1800s as the tectonic plate mechanisms had not been postulated, and to add to their confusion the arrangement of older over younger rocks was repeated.  If you want a much better explanation have a look at this web page:

The Moine Thrust: An idea that unravelled mountains

This has resulted in  a wide variety of rocks all visible in a small area, from limestone (basic, i.e. alkaline) to gneiss (acidic)  plus some wet forests. This variety of surfaces produces a wide variety of lichen species, which can be quite fussy about  what they like to grow on. Something for everyone.

We arrived on a Sunday and people settled into their accommodation.  Most of us were staying in and around Inchnadamph Lodge, and we set up our microscopes there.  The general format is to meet for breakfast, then go somewhere in groups and then come back at night for an evening meal and to look at any lichens we might have collected. Prior to the week, the local organiser Andy Acton had done a lot of work seeking out suitable sites and getting permissions from landowners. The microscopes are needed as many lichens can't be identified just by looking, you need chemical testing and to check spores.

The weather forecast was dire - rain, rain, rain - but fortunately it worked out much better than that and there were long spells when it didn't rain during the day.

View from the back of the Lodge showing the track up the glen

The first day, I went for a walk up the local glen, Glen Traligill.  Some groups didn't get past the stone wall shown in the photograph by the track! We went further up the glen and looked at some limestone crags.  As there is no limestone locally, most of the lichens on the rocks were unfamiliar to me. The nearest I get to a limestone substrate locally is mortar or concrete. Two of the more memorable ones were Placynthium nigrum , a black crust with a startling deep blue border, and Gyalecta jenensis with orange apothecia with frilly margins.

Placynthium nigrum

Gyalecta jenensis

Lichens that grow on rocks are called saxicolous. Some also grow on soil, and they are then termed terricolous. The bare-ish soil on top of some hummocks was worth investigation.

Lichenologists lying down on the job!

Here are some of the lichens we found:

A selection of terricolous lichens

The greenish one on the far left and right has tiny maroon mushrooms on it and is called Baeomyces rufus.  The white one in the middle is Dibaeis baeomyces, which can also have tiny mushrooms but none had developed yet. Another find was Pycnothelia papillaris which as tiny bumps like nipples.

Pycnothela papillaris

Day 2 was a trip alongside Loch Assynt. There is a joke about botanists and lichenologists that they never get out of the car park (so much to see!), though we did get as far as the first gate before stopping! Lichens don't mind growing on bare wood (lignum).

The views were stunning though they had to compete with scrutinising the rocks:

This rock had Placopsis lambii with orange apothecia like jelly tots and greenish  Lecanora intricata.

From left: 3 Placopsis lambii pictures and on right, greenish Lecanora intricata

The wildlife was attracted to a reddish rucksack.

Day 3 was rather wet so I bowed out and went to a tea-shop with my husband!

As this is getting a bit long, I will continue the saga in a second post.

Wanderings around Kinrara and Inchnadamph

 On one of the sunny days in September, we went for a walk around  the Kinrara pinewoods.  Before we set off, I went to check the greenhouse but there was a spider's web across the path. I had to break the web to get past and carefully draped it on the lavender bush as there was a large spider busy wrapping its prey in silk.  Shades of the hobbit in Lord of the Rings! The spider is probably the Garden Orb spider (Araneus diadematus) and the unfortunate bundle looked as if it might have been a bumble bee.  

I found the same species of spider in a very different habitat when in Inchnadamph.  This one was sitting on a dead tree in moorland and kept obligingly still while I took its photograph.

You can just about make out the same stripey legs but the distinguishing feature is the cross on its back, so it is sometimes called the Cross Orbweaver. 

At both Kinrara and Inchnadamph I saw Fox Moth caterpillars(Macrothylacia rubi) crawling across the path. They are easy to spot as they are big and hairy and crawl around at this time of year looking for somewhere to hibernate under moss or leaves until the spring.

Fox Moth caterpillar at Kinrara

You can judge the size of the caterpillar by the car key next to it. It was probably a couple of inches (5cm) long.

 Another hairy caterpillar, curled up on a rock near Inchnadamph, was a bit smaller and google lens tells me that it is a Drinker. If you know better, let me know! It has white markings along the side.

One area, under the pine trees at Kinrara, was conspicuous from a distance as it was a much lighter pale grey green than the surroundings.  

This proved to be a carpet of "Reindeer Moss,"  not a moss at all but a lichen.

 My foot will give you an idea of the size

The structure is of many branched stalks, a bit reminiscent of a coral.  The nature of the branching, especially how many branches are on the tips, helps to decide the species. I took a piece home to look more closely and decided it was probably Cladonia arbuscula as the tips bent over to one side and had 4 branches at the ends with an opening between them.

Now on to Inchnadamph, or Innis na Damh, the meadow of the stags.  Inchnadamph is at the end of Loch Assynt on the Northwest coast of Scotland. I went there for a week with other lichen enthusiasts for a field course based at Inchnadamph Explorers Lodge. Some people stayed at the main lodge but I was in one of the converted steadings which was 100m away. Crossing between the two buildings one dark evening involved an encounter with a stag - I'm not sure who was the most nervous, but he ran off first! I saw this stag with his four hinds  in the car headlights when returning one night. The area around the buildings must have been his territory he was protecting.  We were surrounded by deer who roared all night! The stags must have been worn out by morning.

You might wonder what lichen enthusiasts do all week , so I will say more about Inchnadamph in the next post. If you are not in the least curious you can ignore that post!

Fording the Feshie

Last month I met with the Highland Biological Recording Group (HBRG) to do a Bioblitz on a patch on land in Glen Feshie.  It is part of the area owned by Wildland, who wanted to know what was in a particular area to give a baseline survey before they undertook interventions.  The idea of a Bioblitz is that you record everything you find that is alive (apart from the people!) and I wanted to look at the lichens whilst others recorded fungi, plants, insects and anything else that hopped or flew past.

The Feshie

The area where we were recording was on the other side of the Feshie from the road, so we were ferried across the ford in a vehicle.

The ford across the Feshie

We were lucky with the weather which was dry, though the midges were plentiful. Too plentiful for my husband who decided to return before the vehicles came back and forded the Feshie in his bare feet!   I found a few lichens that particularly interested me, on Scots Pine.  

A new one for me was Hypogymnia farinacea. Not surprising that I had not seen it before as there are very few records, though it had been found in Glen Feshie before but on an Alder. It looks very similar to the common Hypogymnia physodes except that the soralia (the powdery looking bits) are all over the lobes rather than just at the tips.

Hypogymnia farinacea

There was plenty of Hypogymnia physodes as well, though I did find one thallus with an apothecium on it – never seen that before!

Hypogymnia physodes with apothecium ringed in red

A large fallen trunk had a pattern of black lines following the grain of the wood which I thought looked rather beautiful. This is actually a lichen called Xylographa parallela.

I didn't entirely ignore the plants I saw, though I find it hard to combine botany recording with recording lichens on the same trip, so I usually stick with one or the other.

There was some Common Mouse-ear (Pilosella officinarum) in bud looking like a boiled sweetie:

And a new plant for me, Mountain Sorrel (Oxyria digyna), growing in the shingle. Presumably the seeds were washed down in the water from higher up.

Mountain Sorrel

Other excitements were seeing 3 Capercaillie which flew across the road as we drove in. I had never seen one “in the flesh” before.  And to cap it all, I found a Capercaillie feather elsewhere on a tree stump. A brilliant day.

Butterflies and moths in the garden

 Although it is only a couple of days since my last post, we have had some sunshine and I was delighted to see a Hummingbird Hawk-moth visiting the Buddleia.  I have seen one on three days so far but it is just luck that I happen to be passing the bush when one is visiting. I did manage to video one of the visits though. I'm including a still in case you don't want to download the video.

Hummingbird Hawk-moth

Other visitors were  Red Admirals, Small Tortoiseshells and a Comma, looking rather like an autumn leaf.

A Comma Butterfly

Down in England

 July and August involved visits to family in various parts of England. Although I am there to enjoy my family, I keep an eye out for plants that are new to me.  The first visit was to Sunbury-on- Thames. While walking along the road to collect grandchildren from school, I spotted a grass growing at the edge of the pavement that was unlike anything I had seen before, and looked like fingers. There was more of it growing in the adjacent drive, between the paving.

Hairy Finger Grass

It turned out to be Hairy Finger Grass, Digitaria sanguinalis. You can see where the name came from (digit meaning finger) and the stems were hairy.  The BSBI distribution map shows that it is spreading north but has not reached my area, yet.

I think it is very likely that in this case the seed was introduced with the imported sand used when laying the pavers in the drive. 

In a naturally sandy path in Sunbury Park, there were a series of little holes.  If you were patient and waited for a while, the digger of these holes came along.  

Apologies for the length and quality of the video (24s) but my video editing skills are nil. I can't identify what kind of wasp it is. Let me know if you can!

An easier insect to identify was a Jersey Tiger moth that got into the house and had to be rescued.

Another insect-to-be was spotted in Sunbury Park on the Ragwort: the caterpillars of the Cinnabar moth.

Later in the week, we went down to Somerset and I did a bit of botanising in Crewkerne. One new plant was Caper Spurge (Euphorbia lathyris).

Caper Spurge

The plant exudes a white liquid when broken which can produce nasty blisters on the skin and the plant is poisonous so not one to meddle with. There are lots of fascinating facts about it here including that medieval beggars used it to induce blisters on their skin in the hope of eliciting sympathy (and a monetary contribution). I also saw the red berries of Cuckoo Pint or Lords and Ladies (Arum maculatum), another plant that is common elsewhere but not in Newtonmore and the Cairngorms.

Cuckoo Pint berries

The final visit was to North Cheshire and South Lancashire. I was shocked by the amount of Himalayan Balsam (Impatiens glandulifera) by any waterways. It is an invasive weed and it was certainly out of control in the places I visited.

Himalayan Balsam on the far bank of the canal

The bees and butterflies found it attractive though so at least it was benefiting some of the wildlife.

Small blue butterfly on Himalayan Balsam