Teabags and Halophytes

 More on the mystery parcel... it is part of a research project  to investigate halophytes.  Halophytes are plants that can cope with salt so they can grow by the sea or increasingly they have spread to the sides of salted roads.  Some have reached Newtonmore which is 45 miles from the coast, presumably from seeds in car tyres and carried on the wind. Here are the details of the current project:

I will be collecting some of the plants in Newtonmore and further afield if I see them.  If you want to help out, I'm sure Christopher would be pleased to hear from you (email above).  The plants are only just appearing so it is not too late to volunteer.  The parcel he sends you contains the materials for collecting, drying and logging your plant samples.

Another plant that is spreading, probably in car tyre treads is  Mossy Stonecrop (Crassula tilleaea).  It used to classed as scarce, and was missing from much of Britain as shown in the map below.

It appeared in North East Scotland and is making its way inland.  I found it in 2019 in the car park at the Folk Museum in Newtonmore.

Mossy Stonecrop (the red plants)

It is a succulent with fleshy leaves, and can grow from broken off parts.  Given that it is in the car park, it almost certainly arrived in a tyre tread.  It is easy to spot as although it is tiny, it is bright red so if you see it locally, let me know.

Some interesting arrivals!

Frog spawn has appeared in my pond this week. The first batch  arrived on the night of Friday 15th March. Last year (2023) it was 20th March, and 6th April in 2022.  So this is the earliest I have seen it in my pond.

 The post has also brought some interesting arrivals.  One was a book called Mountain Flowers by Alan R Walker.

I am in the process of arranging for a second edition of Wildflower Walks around Newtonmore, and I contacted Alan as I refer to his book in the preface.  He then very kindly posted me a printed copy of his book, which has been completely revised for 2024.  The file of the book is freely available from Alan's website:

https://www.alanrwalker.com/mountain-flowers/

So go and visit and pick up your free copy!

You might wonder why a book on mountain flowers is relevant for Newtonmore... well, as Newtonmore is at 250m above sea level,  many of our flowers appear in Alan's book.  There is a page for each flower with a photo, a drawing, a distribution map and other useful information - more than you get in most flower books that don't have the room to go into each species in depth. Here's an example page.

So do go and visit Alan's website and get yourself a copy.  As a science writer by trade, Alan writes well and you will enjoy reading some of the other material on his site.

There was a reason for picking the page on Scurvygrass as it relates to the second parcel I received.  Here are the contents of the parcel:

Why on earth would someone from the University of Edinburgh send me:

• 5 plastic bags containing approximately 50g orange silica gel beads each
• 1 plastic bag containing:
• 15 empty paper tea bags
• 1 spare tea bag containing 15 paper clips
• 1 spare tea bag containing 15 small index cards
• Postage of £3.49 — enough to cover shipping the package back with second class small parcel service (please reuse the packaging if possible)
• 1 archival ink pen

(Who knew you could buy empty tea bags?) It is a science project about Danish Scurvy Grass and I will explain more in my next blog post.  If you are unsure what Danish Scurvy Grass looks like, check out this previous blog post  See you next time!

Plastic fantastic

 I mentioned in my last post that I had plans to investigate a sheet of black plastic that I had acquired while helping friends move house. Here it is again with a ruler for scale:

Looking at the cover of lichens, there are three kinds.  The flat round patches are crustose lichens. Here is one in detail:

Lecidella elaeochroma - a crustose lichen

I had seen this lichen before on trees but it looked quite different on  the plastic.  Just above it on the photos is a leafy or foliose lichen.  This is a tiny little Physcia species. There are other foliose lichens on the plastic that form leafy rosettes. Finally, the lichens that stick up like small bushes are called fruticose lichens.

Lecidella elaeochroma has the handy property of glowing bright orange in UV light which is a big help with identification. Here is a picture of it on an elm trunk.

Lecidella elaeochroma glowing orange under UV on an elm trunk.

Confusingly, on the plastic it glowed yellow rather than orange which made me doubt whether it was Lecidella elaeochroma, but further investigation confirmed it was. I also got confirmation from a lichen expert called Brian Coppins who was visiting me. A lovely man who is very generous with his time and expertise.

He took a look at my piece of black plastic and immediately pointed out a lichenicolous fungus (i.e. a fungus that grows on lichen) with the unpronounceable name of Zyzygomyces physciacearum. 

 Zyzygomyces physciacearum on Physcia

The lichenicolous fungus (let's just say LF) takes up home  on the lichen of its choice and proceeds to change how the lichen grows, producing lumps and bumps that spread the fungus.

The warty lumps and bumps of the LF

I've not investigated this one yet, but I did look more closely on the other lichens and found some more LFs.  One produced a big (well, big for a lichen!) 4mm balloon like growth called a gall on a different lichen.  

I cut it open and it was hollow inside.

The white strands are hyphae, the name for strands of fungus.  The black dots are part of the LF where it can produce spores.  Unfortunately, this one had not produced enough spores for me to identify it.

I had more luck with a different LF where the circular black bits had made some spores.

The spores are inside tube-like sacs called asci with 8 spores in each.  The picture looks blue because I used fountain pen ink to stain the sample which makes it easier to see.  There was enough detail to identify this LF as Lichenochora galligena and it was on Physcia aipoliae.  Thanks go to Brian Coppins for confirming the ID.

These LF are rather tricky and I think I will go back to "normal" lichens for the time being as there is plenty for me to learn there.