Wet, Wet, Wet

 I have just come back from a week on the West Coast at Lochaline, with friends from the Inverness Botany Group.  We stayed in the very grand Ardtornish House, in the South Wing, where the hall was  the size of some people's flats!

The first day was relatively dry but the rest of the week was very wet - but we went out every day botanising, with time for other interests such as lichens (for me) and moths.  The moth trap caught some bigger moths, which look very hairy in closeup.

Moths: a Drinker and a Buff Ermine

I was very taken with the variety of seaweeds along the coast, especially this yellow collection, with different shapes. Seaweeds are algae - similar to the algae in lichens, but bigger.

Of course there were plenty of plants as well, especially those that like boggy conditions, like the yellow Bog Asphodel and Butterwort clinging to the rock where the rain drained.

It was so wet that newts had taken up residence in one of the puddles on the track up the Black Glen.

Two newcomers to the garden

 An unfamiliar plant popped up in the garden, near the compost bins.

Yellow flowered mystery plant

It had double yellow flowers and big lobed leaves.

A bit of research named it as Greater Celandine, the double flowered version. (Chelidonium majus "Flore pleno") I've never seen it before, either in the wild or anyone's garden.  How it got there is a mystery.  It is not much like the usual Lesser Celandine  (Ficaria verna) which is in the Butttercup family whereas Greater Celandine is in the Poppy family. Other poppies have sap called latex and Greater celandine has latex too when you break a stem - but it is a bright orange! The picture doesn't really do it justice.

Orange latex of Greater Celandine

Lesser Celandine

The name Celandine comes from the Latin and Greek words for swallow as it was supposed to flower when the swallows arrived and die when they left. This would make sense for the Greater Celandine, but not for the Lesser celandine which blooms in early spring. You can see the root in the scientific name of Greater Celandine (Chelidonium majus as  chelīdonius  is Latin for "relating to the swallow."

Another nice surprise was under a log.

It is a baby newt.  It is very small, probably about 4cm (1.5 inches)long, as you can see by the old sycamore helicopter wings near it.   I have never seen newts in our pond, but maybe they are there after all.  Like frogs, they start off as tadpoles and then leave the pond.  The etymology of newt is interesting as it was originally "an ewt" but now we say "a newt." Even longer ago it was known as an eft. In some words the "n" has moved the other way: "an apron" was originally " a napron"