A sticky business and an unexpected find

Twice a year I survey a few plots for the NPMS (National Plant Monitoring Scheme). All my plots are in the 1 km x 1 km square which has the Grid Reference NN7199 - which is handy as it is the square I live in.  I was up behind Craggan yesterday, looking at one of the plots which is on a boggy bit of moor.  The most obvious plant is bog cotton (Eriophorum vaginatum) which has fluffy white seedheads that wave around in the wind. This one is Hare's-tail Cottongrass.

Bog cotton or cottongrass

The wet areas have a carpet of sphagnum moss.  Look carefully at the picture below and you can see the moss in the centre. look even more carefully and you can see some red patches. Sphagnum can be red, but in this case the red patches are a different tiny plant.

Sphagnum moss and...?

Getting onto your knees and peering is the only way to see what it is. They are tiny, as the photo with my finger shows.

This is the leaf of a sundew (Drosera rotundifolia) which grows in wet nutrient-poor places and captures extra food by digesting flies which get caught on the sticky droplets. I didn't notice when I took the photo but there is a fly caught on this one. The green  oval coming from the centre of the leaves is the flower bud.

They are very beautiful in their tiny way, so I took lots of photos (using a clip on macro lens on my phone).

On the way home I went past a mossy rock face at the back of Craggan.

  I wasn't intending to look for lichens but I couldn't resist investigating.  I was glad I did as I found  a lichen I had never seen before.  It was minty green with black spots.

It turned out to be Peltigera brittanica which is found in Scotland  but not elsewhere in the UK. The edges are turned up and remind me of a poppadom. Here is a close up which gives a better idea of the colour. 

It grows browner when dry, and a much brighter green when wet and grows on mossy acidic rocks in moist woodland, which is exactly where I found it.