Two nice surprises

 I have been attempting to convert a lawn into a wildflower meadow over the last two years.  I am taking a "slowly, slowly" approach and just seeing what comes up, though I have sown Yellow Rattle and Devil's Bit Scabious which are becoming established.  Of their own accord, Meadow Buttercups, Heath Bedstraw, Germander Speedwell, Fox and Cubs and  Cat's-ear have appeared as well as a multitude of grass species.  But the best appearance so far was a single orchid:

Northern Marsh-orchid (Dactylorhiza purpurella)

I have no idea how it got here.  The lawn had been regularly mowed for many years by the previous owner so had this plant kept trying to grow and been mown down each time? The same species of orchid  grows on the golf course but that is a fair distance away for seed to have travelled. (I  walked around the Golf Course 10 days ago and there were plenty of orchids either blooming or in bud, so now would be a good time to walk round.)

I have been stuck at home since catching Covid after a trip to London. However, before I tested positive, I went for a walk up Glen Banchor and saw an insect I had never seen before. It was on an old fallen tree. Can you spot it?

Spot the insect...

Here's a closer look.

This is a view from the back end - the head is at the top.  I can't help thinking that the two shiny black blobs at the rear end are meant to fool any predators that this is really the head end of a bigger insect.

To get an idea of size, here is a video with my finger for scale.

It is quite hairy so looks a bit like a cross between a bee and a beetle.  In fact, it is a Bee Beetle (Trichius fasciatus) and its larvae develop in old rotten birch logs so it may have either been wanting to lay eggs or had just "hatched."  Or maybe it was just visiting! They are uncommon but are usually found on flowers (which they eat). According to my book, they also make a buzzing sound when they fly.  So keep your ears and eyes open and let me know if you see one.

Gadding about

 Since I last posted, I have travelled about more in the last month than I have all year. First was a trip to Inverness to transport a friend who needed an operation at Raigmore hospital. This meant an early start and all day in Inverness until she was able to be discharged. An ideal opportunity to do some botanising in Inverness, rather than rushing around the shops.

I checked the online database of the BSBI to see which areas had not been surveyed much. This database is free to access for anyone and gives a list of the species that people have recorded. As a member of the public, you can look at a 2km square and see what plants occur. As a recorder, I have been granted special access and I  looked at the 1 km squares around Inverness. (You need the Grid Reference to search). NH6744 did not have many plants recorded so I decided to go and look there.  This is the area to the NW of Raigmore.

NH6744

At first sight, I could see why there were not many records. It is a housing area and the pavement edges have all been kept very bare either by weedkiller or neat homeowners. Wildflowers need a bit of neglect to thrive! I found a parking space by some flats which were surrounded by (unweeded!) gravel. The first thing that caught me eye was an ENORMOUS red clover, much bigger than the usual plants I see being about 40 cm tall.

The large red clover

Checking that it was Red Clover, I looked at the shape of the stipules - this is the name for little leaf-like growths that appear at the base of leaf stalks. You can see them in the above photo if you follow down from the clover leaf to where the leaf stalk joins the main stem.

Stipule - purple veined with a bristle point

I was happy that it was Red Clover (there is a similar plant called Zigzag Clover) but it still didn't look like the ones I see regularly.  A bit more research in the doorstop of a book called "Stace" revealed that there is an agricultural variety that is more vigorous and had hollow stems so I cut the stalk in half.

Hollow stem

So that convinced me that I had agricultural Red Clover (Trifolium pratense var. sativa) which was a new one for me. How it got to the gravel in front of the flats was a mystery...

A more promising spot was a bridge over the Mill Burn.

A selection of ferns on the bridge over Mill Burn

There were at least 4 different ferns in  a shady spot over the burn.

Maidenhair Spleenwort (Asplenium trichomanes)

Wall Rue (Asplenium ruta-muraria)

Hart's-Tongue (Asplenium scolopendrium) and another fern that I cannot identify

Interestingly, I saw exactly the same community on my trip to West London (Hampton Hill). This was on a wall over the railway and was very different as it was hot and dry and not where I expected to find ferns. The yellow flower is Yellow Corydalis (Pseudofumaria lutea) which likes growing on walls.

Other trips involved a look at plants on the banks of the River Tummel:

Fellow botanists in a field of cowslips

When I got home from London, there was a surprise waiting for me....  find out more in another post!