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.