Bindweeds

 Bindweeds are those plants that twine around fences, trees and other plants - anywhere they can get a grip - and if nothing is available they carpet the ground.  There are two areas in Newtonmore where Large Bindweed (Calystegia silvatica) has taken hold and covered large areas - near the Clune Terrace Playpark and the Jack Richmond Memorial Park.

Large Bindweed near Clune Terrace, climbing a tree

Large Bindweeed at Jack Richmond Park

The flowers are large and white, a trumpet shape with green "bracteoles" - little green leaves- at their base.

Large Bindweed flowers

The arrangement of the bracteoles helps to distinguish it from another lookalike, Hedge Bindweed (Calystegia sepium). In Large Bindweed the two big bracteoles overlap and look as if they are inflated.

Overlapping bracteoles of Large Bindweed

Where I was brought up, in North Cheshire, my route to Primary School went along a lane where Large Bindweed grew up the fence.  We called it "Granny-pop-out-of-bed".  The video shows you why (apologies for the sound, it was very windy when I filmed this.)

A similar Bindweed grows on the back path from the Golf Clubhouse to Curly's Lane. It is Hedge Bindweed (Calystegia sepium).

Hedge Bindweed

From the angle of the photograph, you could be forgiven for thinking this was the same as Large Bindweed, but if you look from the side, you can see that the bracteoles (the green leaves at the base) don't overlap, so it is Hedge Bindweed.

Hedge Bindweed - non overlapping bracteoles.

In Hedge Bindweed you can also see the sepals, which are paler green and beneath the bracteoles.  In Large Bindweed, the sepals were completely hidden.

 I found a third Bindweed in my garden, and I think it must have arrived with some manure as I had not seen it before. Here it is among my courgettes.

Black-bindweed

It has tiny white flowers and is much smaller. It is Black-bindweed (Fallopia convolvulus). Apparently it has black seeds, but I have been weeding it out too soon to check that.  It had certainly managed to appear at lots of other places in the garden so I can't have been thorough enough.

Seeds of Black-bindweed, enclosed in green sepals

It is in a different family to the previous Bindweeds (which are in Convolvulaceae) as it is in the same family as Japanese Knotweed and Buckwheat.

Two nice finds

 During the recent warm spell, I have been walking on the Etteridge and Phones tracks, doing some botanical recording. (Phones and Etteridge are two Estates south of Newtonmore.)

 Most of what I found was fairly common but I was surprised to find this plant by the side of the Etteridge track:

Hemp-Agrimony

It is Hemp-agrimony (Eupatorium cannabinum), which I have never seen round here before. The nearest recorded plants are in Nairn and Pitlochry. It's always a buzz to find something new to the area! 

Hemp-agrimony flower

The leaves are similar to Hemp (Cannabis sativa) leaves, hence the name.

Hemp-agrimony leaves

The second day I walked in from the Phones end, and saw these strange yellow tuning-fork structures amongst the heather:

The next photo gives you an idea of the scale, and the green branching stalks are the same plant.

Fruiting Stag's-horn Clubmoss

It is a Clubmoss, Stag's-horn Clubmoss (Lycopodium clavatum).  It is similar to another Clubmoss, called Interrupted Clubmoss (Lycopodium annotinum) which I have seen near Wolftrax.

Interrupted Clubmoss

They both seem to grow in heathery places and are only easy to spot when there is a bare patch of ground. If you are not sure which one you have found, look carefully at the "leaves" which are scales along the stem. the Stag's-horn Clubmoss has white hairs at the end of each scale.

Stag's-horn scales with hairs

Interrupted Clubmoss - no hairs

Clubmosses are not mosses, but belong to a group of plants that produce spores.  Nowadays you find clubmosses in mountainous areas and they are all small but millions of years ago there were tree-like Clubmosses that grew to 45m!  You can read more about Clubmosses here.

I put a sample of the Stag's-horn Clubmoss under the microscope to take a picture of the cones (the yellow parts that produce the spores).  

Close-up of Stag's-horn Clubmoss cones

I left the sample under the microscope and had a look at it just now - and got a surprise! The cone scales have opened up and released a little pile of yellow spores.

Spores of Stag's-horn Clubmoss

The spores are called Lycopodium powder or Dragon's breath and can be bought on the internet.  They are used in science experiments and cosmetics as they have two opposite properties - they don't get wet, and the powder can burst into flames explosively when sprinkled over a flame. Hmmm- what to do with my little pile....

Taking the pith!

 There are two kinds of Elderberries locally - one with black/dark purple berries and one with red.  I was familiar with the black berried one, Elder (Sambucus nigra), which grows all over Britain and Ireland apart from a few mountainous areas of Scotland.  As a child, I used to try and make ink from the berries, without much success. In Newtonmore, most of the berries are green at the moment, with the odd few turning black.

Elder

Elder has white flowers, usually appearing after the last frost, in a flat-topped "umbel," which can be used to make elderflower drinks. And, as is usually the case, I find that the really common things are the ones I don't have a photo of! (When I wrote the Wildflower Walks book, I found I didn't have a photo of a dandelion....)

The other Elder is Red-berried Elder (Sambucus racemosa), and I had not noticed it when I lived in Cheshire.  It is mainly found in  the North and East of Scotland:

Red-berried Elder

Its flowers look similar to Elder but are arranged differently, in a panicle - a loosely branched arrangement of flowers, rather than having a flat top like an umbel.  You can see what I mean in this photo of the buds, taken in April near the church at Loch Insh.

Flower buds of Red-berried Elder

The leaves of both trees are so similar that I could not tell them apart when there were no flowers or berries. However, there is an amazing book by John Poland and Eric Clement, "The Vegetative Key to the British Flora" - in other words - how to tell what a plant is when it doesn't have any flowers to help you. There was a useful tip on telling the difference between the two Elders:

Elder: "Twigs with white pith and fetid gravy odour"

Red-berried Elder: "Twigs with orange-brown pith, often with a faint blackcurrant odour"

Well, I can't say I noticed the smell but the colour of the pith certainly works, with one proviso which I'll come to in a minute.

Here's the  white pith of an Elder twig:

White pith of Elder twig

And on the left hand side is the orange brown pith of a Red-berried Elder:  

Pith of Red-berried Elder

Now for the proviso.  Choose your twig carefully. The first shoot I tried had white pith (the right-hand side of this photo).  That didn't seem right.   I knew it was a Red-berried Elder as I was standing next to the red berries.  But what I learned was that you have to pick a woody twig like the one on the left, (definitely orange pith) NOT a green shoot as the pith is still white in the new shoots.

There are a large number of Red-berried Elder bushes on the steep slope alongside the road between Newtonmore and Kingussie.