Catch up

It has been a while since my last post as life has been very busy, so this months post is a round up of photos.

 April saw a trip down to Perth to the Scottish Rock Garden Club show and a walk along the Tay. I came back from the show with 20 packets of seed.  Some are in the fridge as most alpines need a cold spell before germinating, so the fridge mimics the winter. I love the excitement of watching a pot of seeds awaiting little green shoots.

The walk along the Tay introduced me to a new plant with white flowers, which I thought was rather attractive. On looking it up, it was Few-flowered Garlic (Allium paradoxum). It is not native, but an introduced species which becomes invasive and it is an offence to plant it in the wild.  

My photos are rather poor but there are some much better ones here where there is a blog post all about this plant.

I am helping to organise a lichen course in June, in Glenmore, so there have been a few trips to find suitable rocks to study.

Plenty of unknown crustose species here!

 A walk near Loch Morlich found more lichens on old stumps, mainly Cladonias,

 and the surprise find of a dead bat at the base of a pine tree.

On a walk up Cairngorm, on the Coire an t-Sneachda path, a hairy caterpillar crossed our path:

I also saw some lichens that were new to me, including Allantoparmelia alpicola which looked like a blob of magma. To see it you need to be on high ground, over 600m. It is the black lumpy lichen in the middle of the photo.

The fibrous looking lichen at the top left is Pseudephebe pubescens:

There is a great variety of forms of lichens from lumpy crusts to these spiky strands. All beautiful in their own way.