Creeping Lady's-tresses

My second find this week was very serendipitous. I was planning to walk the dog in a particular spot but someone else was parked there, so I went to another spot where I had walked many times before along a minor road.  I decided to wander at random in the pinewood plantation there, not expecting to do any botanising or find anything new, when a small white orchid growing on a tree stump among heather caught my eye. It was just a few inches high and there were no others nearby.  I got rather excited and took several photos.

The first find

 Walking on, I found a few more, and a few more and in the end I found hundreds throughout the wood!

I thought it might be Creeping Lady's-tresses which I had only seen once before at Loch-an-Eilean.  Checking in my Wild Flower book when I got home confirmed it.  Its scientific name is Goodyera repens.

I went back the next day and found even more of these tiny white spikes in the spaces between the rows of pines. A  long description of the plant can be found here and here.  It is mainly restricted to the Highlands in old pine forests, more than 95 years old.  It can spread by runners (hence the name- Creeping) so often appears in clumps, or by seed when it is pollinated by a bumble bee.

A group of Creeping Lady's tresses in a Scots Pine wood

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The flowers are arranged in a spiral but turn so that they all face one way.  This makes the back of the stalk look like a plait which is why it is called lady's-tresses.

The plaited back of the stem, also showing the scale like leaves up the stem.

The outer parts of the flowers are covered in sticky hairs.

The base of the stalk has oval leaves which have noticeable cross veins between the main veins.

Close up of basal leaf showing veins and cross-veins

Some of the runners give rise to rosettes of leaves which do not have a flower stalk - yet.  Unlike other orchids, the leaves are evergreen and persist over the winter.

I am always amazed at how even familiar places can reveal a new discovery, even when you think you have seen everything.  It certainly made my day, especially when I found that no one else had recorded this lovely rare plant growing there.

Fumitory

In the last few days I have found flowers locally that I don't see very often,  The first one was Common Fumitory (Fumaria officinalis) by the Tennis Courts in Newtonmore. It prefers chalky soil - which we don't have locally- or sand, so it is not as common here as the name suggests.  There are several Fumitories which are tricky to tell apart as you have to look at the shape of the sepals and the fruits.

Common Fumitory

A close-up of the flowers.  The sepal is the white mini-leaf at the base of the flower.

The narrow sepal of Common Fumitory

This fruit has a blunt end - Common Fumitory

I have also found another Fumitory up at Ballachroan.  This was Fumaria muralis - which sounds as if it should be called Wall Fumitory, but it is called Common Ramping-fumitory.  This is one of the commonest species found in the North. It has a wider sepal, though it is tricky to tell, and the fruit is more rounded with a narrow neck.

Common Ramping-fumitory

The wider sepal of Common Ramping-fumitory

The fruit of Common Ramping-fumitory

The name is a bit of a puzzle but Collins dictionary says:

 

C14: from Old French fumetere, from Medieval Latin fūmus terrae, literally: smoke of the earth

A Sticky End and my Unusual Job

 You could be forgiven for thinking I was obsessed with stickiness from my last few posts, but yet another sticky plant seemed worth writing about.  I delayed writing this post because I was looking for a particular document - which I failed to locate - so I am writing it anyway.

At the end of June I went to look for lichens in the trees at the base of Creag Dubh, near the lochans below Craig Dhu House (and yes they spell it differently).  I had foolishly forgotten my insect repellant so did not stay long - too many irritating midges - and I abandoned that spot and went to look at the plants by the lochans instead.  I particularly wanted to check on a different kind of sundew, Great Sundew (Drosera anglica), which I had seen several years ago at the edge of the loch but could not find last year.  I did find it this year.  It grows on the stony ground that is flooded in winter but is exposed when the loch level drops. I have never found it anywhere else.

 It differs from the more common Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia) which has round leaves (as its name suggests). This one has elongated spoon shaped leaves.

Great Sundew (in flower)

It is still a small plant, just a few centimetres high. like the other sundews, it catches flies.

A fly stuck to the Sundew - look carefully to see the club shaped projections (halteres) on the thorax

Two unfortunate flies have become stuck to the sticky drops.  I am no fly expert but they may be a kind of midge, and my insect book says that the feathery antennae are just on the males so they can detect the whining noise made by the females.  It is just the females that  are the bloodsuckers as the males just feed on nectar.  

Most insects have 2 pairs of wings - think of dragonflies or butterflies. The term "fly" refers to a class of insects called Diptera which have one pair of wings for flying and the second pair of wings have been reduced to two short club shaped projections.  You can see them in the photo near where the wings emerge from the thorax.   

I was once more adept at identifying flies.  Between leaving school and starting at University, I worked for an engineering firm called Henry Simon that was developing the "Insect-o-cutor".  This consisted of a UV light which attracted flying insects which were then zapped by a high voltage grid and fell into a collection tray below.  Prototypes were installed into food factories, where they could kill insects without the use of chemicals.  I remember a visit to the Paxo Stuffing factory to collect the contents of the tray.  My unenviable job was to identify and count the different insects from their frazzled remains.  The smell was very distinctive! 

The document I was looking for was a press release showing me in my white coat doing that very job....alas, I have been through a lot of folders but haven't yet found it.  Watch this space!