Around the Loch and further afield

 This post will be a bit of a look back as I have not posted for a while so some of the flowers may have finished. Round Loch Imrich, an orchid appeared by the path.

Common Spotted-orchid

This is a Common Spotted-orchid (Dactylorhiza fuchsii) but it is not at all common locally.  I have only ever found it at Loch Imrich, just one or two each year, and never in this spot.  The reason it is not common  for us is because it likes calcareous, basic soils (i.e. on the alkaline side).  The silted area at the end of the Loch must be basic whereas most of our soil is acid to neutral. The orchids we see most of are those that like acid soils, like Heath Spotted-orchid.  How do you tell the difference?   Look at the lower part of the flower, the lip. 

 

You can see in the photo that this one has three pointed lobes, well separated, and with the middle lobe the longest. So this is Common Spotted-orchid.

In the picture below of Heath Spotted-orchid (Dactylorhiza maculata) the lip of the flower is much broader and only has a tiny tooth shaped lobe in the centre.

Heath Spotted-orchid

It's not often I find  a flower locally that is new to me so it is quite exciting when I do. While walking on the Badenoch Way near Dalraddy, I saw a beautiful seed head. It was a bit like a Dandelion seed head but each seed had a parachute that was like an inside-out umbrella.

 This is Goat's-beard (Tragopodon pratensis) and has a yellow flower, though I did not get to see one. All I saw were closed up flowers.

This is because it was the afternoon, and apparently the flowers only open in morning sunshine, which gives it its other name of "Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon." 

It is not surprising that I had not seen it before as it is scarce locally. Here's the map of where it has been recorded (from BSBI site).  Each little square shows where it has been found and you can see that it is not common locally, and gets more common as you travel south.

Distribution of Goat's-beard

Here is a blown up section of our area.  The arrow points to a green square, which is the record that I sent in last week.  The pale pink one near it is a record from Kingussie in 1971.  So if you see it in Kingussie, let me know!