White stuff

Winter definitely feels as if it has arrived with sub-zero temperatures and snow for the last week. It looks so beautiful that I can almost forgive the weather for freezing our down pipes...

Newtonmore Golf Course

Birch tree with catkins waiting for the spring

Looking back a few months, I was walking near Craggan and I was surprised to find  some tiny white seeds:

Most seeds I find or sow in the garden are brown. These ones were so white that they stood out against the brown remains of the plant. They are also very small, less than a millimetre long.

Seeds against a 1mm scale

I had visited the site before and knew what grew there, so I was able to match the brown withered stems to a flower called Red Bartsia (Odontites vernus). It is not very common here - I've only seen it in 2 places around Newtonmore.

Red Bartsia

It has attractive purply-pink flowers with yellow stamens and the whole plant, leaves and flowers, is hairy.

It is indeterminate - which means that it keeps on growing more flowers at the top of the spike, like a foxglove. There were many plants growing on a grassy track to a farm gate.  It is an annual, so it will need those seeds to grow again next year.

The third white thing is a bit of a mystery. It was white fluff growing on a beech tree trunk near Monarch Apartments. 

Having passed it before, I thought I ought to go back and check if it was a lichen.  The fluff I am talking about  goes all up the right hand side of the tree.  It doesn't have a particular outline or shape (unlike the round white shapes which will be lichens). Here's a closer look:

I don't think it is a lichen. As coincidence would have it, I had been looking at the website of the Highland Biological Recording Group (HRBG) and found that they are encouraging people to look for something called Beech Scale  which is a tiny insect.  The info sheet says: 

"In heavy infestations it shows as fluffy white patches up to 1cm across on the trunks of old Beech. The ‘fluff’ is a waxy substance produced to protect the eggs and nymphs."

Maybe this is what I have found, but I will have to contact someone more knowledgeable to check it out. As I have joined the HRBG, I might be able to find someone!

Along the Calder

 I decided to test out the theory in my last post, that the Witches Whiskers on Beard lichen (Usnea subfloridana) were more likely to occur in damp humid areas, and headed off alongside the Calder river but on the West (Biallaid) side. There are plenty of old birches in boggy ground.  

Sure enough, there were (tiny) fruiting bodies on the lichen so the theory seems to be promising. 

 There were other things to see as well:

These strange jelly-like blobs were on a dead fallen tree and I am assuming that they are some kind of fungus that has swelled in the rain. The closest match I can find online is the Crystal Brain fungus (what a great name!) Exidia nucleata (= Myxarium nucleatum) Names get changed quite often nowadays, especially if they do DNA analysis. Or it could be Exidia thuretiana, White Brain.

The dog found a roe deer antler which I brought home.

I was unsure when Roe deer shed their antlers so I looked it up on https://www.wildlifeonline.me.uk/animals/article/deer-overview-antler-development-summary

"Under normal circumstances, antlers are shed and re-grown annually to coincide with the deer’s breeding season. Red, Fallow and Sika shed their antlers during April and May and the new growth is complete and cleaned by August/September. Roe, which breed earlier, shed their antlers in November/December and re-grow them over the winter and early spring"

So this antler must have been shed very recently. This was confirmed when I washed it as there was still some blood oozing from the end. 

Getting better...

 Exactly 2 years ago today I wrote a post about Beard lichens (Usnea) and re-reading it, I am pleased to find that after 2 years I am a bit better at knowing what I am looking at! I meet up (by Zoom) every fortnight with a few others who share my interest in lichens, and we have a little investigation going - about Usnea and the weird "flying saucers" with whiskers that grow on them:

The technical name is an apothecium and it is a structure that produces spores that  disperse to grow more lichen.  This is a picture of Usnea subfloridana, which is a really common lichen locally, but it is only rarely that I have found them with these circular growths on them.  I have a theory that they only produce them in damp areas near rivers but I will need to check out some more similar habitats to see if that is the case.

Further south there is a very similar lichen called Usnea florida which always has the circular structures and has the lovely name of Witches' Whiskers. Here's a photo from Wales - not my photo but from Radnorshire Wildlife Trust

Usnea florida

I found examples of these circular growths on Usneas by Tromie Bridge, part of the  Insh Marshes RSPB reserve.  The meadow is best known for the abundance of orchids in the summer, but the whole area is worth a visit at any time of the year.

River Tromie

There were the remains of puffballs: 

Mature puffballs

You may be more familiar with them as round white balls, but they mature and grow spores inside and then a hole forms at the top.  If drops of rain (or a foot!) lands on them the spores puff out like smoke.

Back at home, I regularly see wood mice in the garden and occasionally they get into the house (one of the side effects of living in an old stone house that does not have conventional foundations). Unfortunately a field vole got caught in one of my mouse traps:

They are much chunkier with short tails and blunt faces.  They are much more secretive than mice and I have only rarely seen them in the garden, but they are obviously about. It was rather sad to have caught one. A few years ago I even caught a shrew. These creatures are around us but we remain oblivious to their presence most of the time.

Autumn

 It's definitely looking autumnal now, with the leaves falling and changing colour. I was raking up some leaves in the garden when I spotted a hedgehog.  He/she was  munching on something  so I went to get my phone for a photo.  Hedgehogs always give an impression of being cute, but when I looked at what was being eaten it was a dead field mouse... 

I don't expect to see a hedgehog during the day and my garden is rabbit proofed so when he tried to climb up the netting to move on, I picked him up (carefully, with gloves on,  as those prickles are sharp) and put him in some unfenced woodland.

While walking along the Main Street in Newtonmore, I stopped to look at the lawn in front of the Monarch Apartments (once the Craig Mhor Hotel) which has an extensive crop of fungi growing on it. My favourites have to be the ink caps (Coprinus species) which start off as fat fingers poking up through the soil.

Then they self destruct into drippy black caps.

The caps release an enzyme that dissolves the cell walls in the cap and gills but leaves the stem standing. Presumably the spores manage to escape before they are destroyed. There is more about inkcaps (and how to make ink) in a previous post here.

Garden fungi and an interesting app

The recent wet weather might not be ideal for walking but it is encouraging lots of fungi to pop up in my lawn.  I am not a fungi expert at all and can only recognise a few obvious ones. This beautiful Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria) appeared in the lawn.

Tuesday (left) and Wednesday (right)

It started off as a globe and is now like an umbrella - which is appropriate as the second photo was taken in the rain today. This is the archetypal fairy toadstool that has hallucinogenic properties.

A second toadstool appeared nearby. Just a nondescript brown one. I have no pictures of it in situ as my husband picked it to try out a new app he had installed on his phone. I am not a big fan of ID apps but I was impressed with this one which used the phone camera to look at the specimen from different angles until it had enough data to arrive at an ID.  Here are some pictures:

The app came up with the name Peppery Bolete (Boletus piperatus).  Being a suspicious sort I looked it up in a book to check if it fitted and I think it does.  It is a bolete because the underside has pores instead of gills. The stem  becomes yellow at the base (easier to see in real life than in the photo). It's associated with Birch trees and often grows close to Fly Agaric so the habitat is correct. The final test is to check the colour of the spores, which should be olive-brown.  To do this, you take off the stalk and put the cap on a piece of paper with a glass over it (so no draughts) and leave overnight.

The result is a perfect replica of the underside of the mushroom.  The spores are supposed to be olive-brown, but I think brown is close enough, given the other features.

The name of the app is Seek by iNaturalist and it is the same program for both iOS (Apple) and Android phones (the rest!).  You can read more about it here.  It identifies in real time so will use up your data if you are out of range of a wifi connection. It even managed to identify some lichens correctly!

Yarrow, Sneezewort and a rare find

There are some flowers that appear late in the season and let you know that autumn is almost here - Devils-bit Scabious, Harebells and Sneezewort. You are probably more familiar with the first two, both being an attractive shade of blue, whereas Sneezewort could be mistaken for a slightly larger Yarrow. They are both in the same family, Yarrow being Achillea millefolium with feathery leaves as the second half of the name suggests, and Sneezewort being Achillea ptarmica, where the second part of the name comes from the Greek for sneeze.  Sneezewort leaves are completely different being narrow and toothed, and apparently if dried and powdered they cause sneezing. The other difference, apart from the leaf shape, is that the Sneezewort flowers are bigger.

Yarrow - smaller flowers, feathery leaves

Sneezewort flowers

Sneezewort leaves

On our trip to Loch Laggan, the small island was covered in Sneezewort, blowing in the wind.

 Whilst I was looking for other flowers, I noticed a plant with spotty leaves and got quite excited thinking I had found a new plant.

The  spotty plant

Looking at it more closely and at some of the other photos I had taken, I realised it was a stunted Sneezewort suffering from some sort of infection.  The  black spots were on the stem as well as the leaves. And when magnified the spots were bumps rather than just the colour of the leaf.

The black spots on the leaves

Fortunately I took a sample back home with me.

Infected plant on a 1 cm squared background

Why fortunately? Remember the expert on fungi that I mentioned in my last post? Prof Bruce Ing? He took the sample away was able to identify the fungus. It's  Schizothyriana*ptarmicae. What, you have never heard of it? Well, neither had I.  Even more surprisingly, it got ZERO hits on Google.  It was keen to substitute schizophrenia instead. 

 Surely, I thought, there must be something on the internet that mentions it? Doesn't the internet have absolutely everything there somewhere.... Well, I tried searching with Google Scholar (which searches research articles) and there were a few hits for articles from Poland and Germany. It turns out that it is very rare (23 records in UK) so Bruce has taken the sample away for it to go in a collection. Fame at last!

*UPDATE -I was talking to Bruce today and it turned out there was a typo on the list I was sent and it should have been Schizothyrioma (pronounced with a soft ch) which got 407 hits on Google!

A very botanical weekend

The beautiful sunny weather last weekend was ideal for some botany activities I had planned. On the Saturday, I took a group of people from the Inverness Botany group up Glen Banchor to look at lichens.  Our first stop was an old dry stone wall by the first cattle grid.  This has so many different lichens on it that you could consider it as a lichen hunter's heaven - or hell - as it is covered in crustose species that I can't identify! I had picked out some of the easier ones to spot and put them on a help sheet:

 Even then, you have to get close up and personal when trying to see the features.

A hand lens, x10, or a little device that clips on your phone can really help you to see the details.

Here are two favourites (anything with blood in the name seems to be popular!):

Blood spot lichen (Ophioparma ventosa) growing on the stone wall

Bloody Heart Lichen (Mycoblastus sanguinarea) growing on a birch tree

The Bloody Heart Lichen has black fruits (apothecia) on it but when scratched, it is orangey-red underneath.  This is because you are exposing an  orange alga that coexists with the lichen  (Trentopohlia).  Most algae are green.  Lichens have (at least) two components: a fungus and an alga.  The fungus gives the lichen its name and provides a home for the alga. The alga produces food by photosynthesis.

On the Sunday, I joined in a Fungus Foray around Newtonmore with Prof Bruce Ing. I was amazed at how many fungi a discerning eye can spot.  There were over 50 around Loch Imrich! 

The undersides have a variety of gills and pores from which the spores fall. Apparently a fungus has to grow very accurately vertical as otherwise the spores would get stuck on the sides of the tubes etc when the spores are released!

Bruce also provided a different ID for the log pile fungus (post has been updated) as Lintneria trachyspora.

Bruce is an expert on Slime Moulds and Mildews and for the first time ever I was delighted that so many plants in my garden had mildew! Bruce took away lots of sample leaves, as apparently each family of plants has a different species of mildew ... who knew?

And finally, a visit to a friend's garden produced lots of sightings of butterflies, so here is one I have not shown before. A Peacock (Inachis io). The caterpillars feed on nettles, and the adult butterflies overwinter in sheds and outhouses.

Sea Plantains inland

 If you travel between Newtonmore and Kingussie (a distance of about 3 miles) you can either go by car along the A86 or use the bike path which runs alongside it. 

View from Bike path looking towards Newtonmore

At the moment, there is a very obvious brown strip on the road verge made up of many brown spikes. In the photo above it is just visible between the white van and the post. In the photo below, it is the grey brown stripe across the middle  of the photo.

The colour is made up of the fruiting spikes of the Sea Plantain (Plantago maritima). I took a picture from the bottom of the slope so it is not very clear:

I thought I would have better photos already on my computer - and maybe I have - but I can't find them! It normally grows by the sea but a few plants started appearing at the side of the road a few years ago, and now it has completely taken over the verge for almost a mile. When driving the back road from Kingussie to Aviemore, it is easy to spot on the side of the road there as well. It can tolerate salt which explains its success.

Today I was walking near Ralia and there were a few plants there as well but not good subjects for a photo as the recent tar and chipping had covered everything in white dust!

A rather dusty Sea Plantain flower with yellow stamens

You can see that it has yellow stamens which makes it easy to distinguish from the other plantains which have white ones. There is an interesting post on the edibility of Sea Plantains here.

A more colourful event was the visit of a Small Tortoiseshell butterfly to my Buddleia in the garden.

Another Lepidoptera

Just like buses, nothing new for a while and then two at once! I was tidying up the greenhouse, removing some tomato and cucumber leaves that had started to wither,  and when I had finished I noticed a surprise on my arm!

This is when it is handy to have a mobile phone as I could extract it from my pocket  and  take the photo one handed. I don't know much about moths but I do have a book of photos - The Collins Complete Guide to British Insects. I have found that if you don't have a photo of what you have seen, it is remarkably difficult to remember exactly what it looked like!

This is a good book for matching photos rather than using keys, but there are an awful lot of moths...

Starting at page 156, the photos go on until page 270, and further if you want to see the caterpillars.  Given my level of ID skills for moths, it was just a matter of scanning each page of photos until I saw something similar.  It was nearly a hundred pages later that I found it!

Angle Shades Moth - 3rd photo down on the right

It is an Angle Shades (Phlogophera meticulosa). Not one I have seen before but  apparently occurs all over Britain.

A new butterfly

 Whilst doing some gardening on a sunny day recently, a butterfly alighted on one of my Shasta daisies and was different from any I had seen before. The silhouette was more like a leaf. And it had a tiny white mark like a comma. Which was a clue as it turned out to be a Comma butterfly, and is the only one with that jagged silhouette.

The wings were orange with brown spots.

I find it quite hard to take decent photos of butterflies with my phone as they fly away when you get close, so here is a picture from my (old -1987) Reader's Digest Butterfly book.

Interestingly, the distribution shown in my book is just in the South of England. Obviously things have changed in the last 30 years! It's scientific name is  Polygonia c-album.  I was going to say that I have no idea what the c- is for when it dawned on me that the c-album means white c shape.