Yellow Flowers round Loch imrich

The banks of Loch Imrich are a sea of yellow at the moment.  Most of the plants are Yellow Loosestrife (Lysimachia vulgaris) and there is so much of it that you might think it is a very common find.  It is very common further south but there are relatively few records of it growing in the Highlands.

Yellow Loosestrife

Map showing distributions of Yellow Loosestrife

The dark areas on the map show where Yellow Loosestrife has been seen and recorded.  (The map is from a database of plant records that is maintained by the BSBI , the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland.)

The white areas show where there are no records - this could be because it does not grow there or nobody has bothered to record it!

A very similar looking plant is also flowering around the Loch.  There is less of it and it came into flower a bit earlier.

Dotted Loosestrife

The flowers are a bit bigger and grow up and down the stem, rather than in a pyramid at the top of the stem. It is called Dotted Loosestrife, (Lysimachia punctata) though I can find no dots on it!  It is often a garden escape and grows in plenty of places around Newtonmore.

The third yellow flower is an iris and has the simple common name of Yellow Iris and the not so simple scientific name of Iris pseudocorus.  It flowered earlier in the year and there are just one or two flowers still open now.

Yellow Iris