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!

The frog spawn arrives - and an interesting twig

Frog spawn has appeared today in my pond – quite hard to see in the photo because of the reflections of trees and sky, but  you can make out the tops of two clumps with plenty more under the surface.

Frog spawn in my pond

I walked round Loch Imrich today as well, and a small amount has appeared there too.

Frog spawn in Loch Imrich

While walking round the loch I picked up one of the many fallen twigs on the ground as it looked to have a good selection of lichens on it.  It was a section of a larch branch  about 25cm (10 inches) long and 15mm (1/2 inch) diameter and I counted 8 different lichens on it, all of which are fairly common locally. There was one species it did not have so I picked up the much thinner twig, at the top of the photo which has an example of it.

How do we know it is a larch twig? Well, apart from the fact that it was underneath some of the larch trees that surround the loch, it has the characteristic nobbles along it.  The roughness of the larch twigs encourages a good growth of lichens, presumably because the spores or fragments of lichen are easily caught and trapped in the bark.  Larch has an acid bark (like pines and birches) and lichens can be quite fussy about where they grow – some prefer acid bark and some prefer less acid bark like that on oaks and hawthorn. I have put some numbers on the photo and I’ll give a list of the different names of the lichens.

1.   1 An Usnea (Beard lichen) probably Usnea subfloridana which is the most common locally.

2.    2   Hypogymnia physodes which has inflated lobe tips so it feels quite bouncy when you press it.

3.    3 Platismatia glauca – quite big grey-blue “leaves” which stick up and are brown underneath.

4.     4 A bit more of 1 (Usnea) and 2(H.physodes)

5.     5 Tuckermanopsis chlorophylla – again more leaflike but smaller than 3 and a browny green colour.

6.      6 A Parmelia  - probably P. sulcata but a bit too young to be sure.

7.      7 Bryoria fuscescens – a horsehair lichen

8.       8Evernia prunastri – this one has been used for a perfume fixative.

9.      9 On the thin twig is a look alike for Evernia prunastri but is a darker colour and covered in tiny fingerlike projections(isidia) and is Pseudevernia furfuracea.

Yet more catkins - but where is the frog spawn?

 There is still no frog spawn in my pond, though there was at this time in previous years, so I thought I would check out Loch Imrich and the marshy spot up Glen Banchor where there is usually lots of spawn.  None seen at all...

Going through the car park opposite the Balavil Hotel, I spotted some red catkins on the ground. They were rather like floppy caterpillars, and had some very sticky leaf buds at the end which had a strong smell. They smelled slightly sweet yet also a bit unpleasant.

Catkins and sticky leaves

The tree they fell from is a Western Balsam Poplar (Populus trichocarpa) which is native to Western North America but has been planted at the corner of the Balavil car park. If you walk past it later in the spring when the leaves are out, you you will notice the sweetish smell.

Western Balsam Poplar

This variety of tree is "dioecious" which means that the trees are either male or female and produce either catkins (if male) or flowers (if female). This tree must be male as it produces catkins, so sadly there will be no seeds. The catkins are rather beautiful in close up, being made up of lots of separate packets of pollen. UPDATE- see end of post to see what happened the next day!

 The Larch also produces red growths, but this time it is the female flowers that have the flashy ruby colour, and when pollinated will produce the cones.

Female Larch flower

The red colour does not last, but is easy to spot before the leaves come out. The Larch is one of the few cone bearing trees that lose their leaves in the winter. The leaf buds in the spring look like little green shaving brushes.

The photo above shows the female flowers having lost their red colour and starting to resemble the cones they will become. The male flowers are underneath.

This twig has last year's cones at the top

Most of the tall trees around Loch Imrich are larches so now is a good time to take a walk around and see if you can find the red flowers before they lose their colour.

UPDATE. I did this post on Saturday evening and when I came down on Sunday morning, the poplar catkin was surrounded by a pile of powdery pollen! So back to the microscope to see what was happening... (though this is actually easier with a x10 hand lens as you get a better 3D view)

The centre of the catkin goes down the middle of the photo and sticking out at right angles on each side  is a green-yellow plate or platform. The red bundles are supsended below the platform on tiny white stalks.

Each of the red bundles (probably the correct term is anthers) then splits and releases its pollen, seen as yellow grains.  There is a lot of it, as even from my sample there was a little heap of yellow powder around the catkin. Why so much? Well, this tree relies on the wind, rather than insects, to carry the pollen grains far and wide in the hope of landing upon a female flower of the same species. Unfortunately, this pollen may be doomed as there are no female Western Balsam Poplar trees anywhere in Newtonmore. Indeed, the nearest trees are recorded in Kincraig and I don't know whether they are male or female. I did go and have a look but they are still bare.

The map is from the BSBI database and each red square shows where a Western Balsam Poplar has been recorded.

Recorded distribution of Western Balsam Poplar