Loch Vaa and Lochain Uvie

Last week I joined some other keen botanists and went to Loch Vaa to look for some specific plants that are not found much locally. Ian Green, who is the BSBI recorder for vice-county 95 (Moray) led the walk as he knew what we were looking for, whereas the rest of us had not even heard of the plants!

Loch Vaa  is North of Aviemore and is just behind Laggantygown Cemetery so there is convenient car parking. It was a stunningly sunny day and the loch was quite low, exposing a stony shore.

Loch Vaa

The water was crystal clear and there were shoals of small fishes.

   There were two plants that we were looking for, both related to a more common species.  The first was a hybrid Spearwort.  Lesser Spearwort (Ranunculus flammula) has a flower like a buttercup but grows in damp or wet areas and has thin leaves.

Lesser Spearwort with narrow leaves (the broad leaves belong to the pondweed)

The plant we were looking for was a hybrid - a cross between  Lesser Spearwort and Creeping Spearwort with the unwieldy name of Ranunculus x levenensis.  But Creeping Spearwort  is an extremely rare plant and does not grow in Moray.  So how did the hybrid get here?  The best explanation is that it was brought in on the feet of visiting waterfowl.  As it roots readily from the stem, this would help it get established.  We found quite a few plants but it is maybe not the most impressive sight .

Hybrid Spearwort

In fact, most of the plants we concentrated on were rather small.  The next on the list was Small Water-pepper (Persicaria minor),  which prefers to grow in more southerly areas and Loch Vaa is the farthest North that it has been found.

Small Water-pepper

It is like Redshank (Persicaria maculosa) which is much bigger and sometimes has a black blotch on the leaves.  It is very common and I have seen it growing at the side of the pavement in Newtonmore Main Street.  I was quite surprised to find I don't have a photo of it!

 Another plant I had not seen before was Marsh Speedwell (Veronica scutellata).   This one had blue flowers but they can be pink or white.

Marsh Speedwell

Inspired by the trip, I thought I would visit Lochain Uvie (just at the base of Creag Dubh) to see if I could find the same plants, as when the loch is low, there is a stony bit of shore. 

Lochain Uvie looking West

Lochain Uvie with Creag Dubh in the background.

I did not find the two rarities as the stony bit was covered in grass.  But there were other compensations. In a dried out boggy area I found a lot of Great Sundew (Drosera anglica).  "Great " is a bit of an exaggeration as it is tiny!  It is an insectivorous plant and catches insects on its sticky hairs.  The leaves are longer and more spoonlike than its even smaller relative, Round-leaved Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia).

Great Sundew

It does have flowers but they were still in bud.

Another bog plant had finished flowering but its seeds were a bright, bright orange.

Bog Asphodel

And finally, there were plenty of grasshoppers pinging about when you walked through the grass. So a very pleasant trip even if I did not find the rarities.

A Sticky End and my Unusual Job

 You could be forgiven for thinking I was obsessed with stickiness from my last few posts, but yet another sticky plant seemed worth writing about.  I delayed writing this post because I was looking for a particular document - which I failed to locate - so I am writing it anyway.

At the end of June I went to look for lichens in the trees at the base of Creag Dubh, near the lochans below Craig Dhu House (and yes they spell it differently).  I had foolishly forgotten my insect repellant so did not stay long - too many irritating midges - and I abandoned that spot and went to look at the plants by the lochans instead.  I particularly wanted to check on a different kind of sundew, Great Sundew (Drosera anglica), which I had seen several years ago at the edge of the loch but could not find last year.  I did find it this year.  It grows on the stony ground that is flooded in winter but is exposed when the loch level drops. I have never found it anywhere else.

 It differs from the more common Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia) which has round leaves (as its name suggests). This one has elongated spoon shaped leaves.

Great Sundew (in flower)

It is still a small plant, just a few centimetres high. like the other sundews, it catches flies.

A fly stuck to the Sundew - look carefully to see the club shaped projections (halteres) on the thorax

Two unfortunate flies have become stuck to the sticky drops.  I am no fly expert but they may be a kind of midge, and my insect book says that the feathery antennae are just on the males so they can detect the whining noise made by the females.  It is just the females that  are the bloodsuckers as the males just feed on nectar.  

Most insects have 2 pairs of wings - think of dragonflies or butterflies. The term "fly" refers to a class of insects called Diptera which have one pair of wings for flying and the second pair of wings have been reduced to two short club shaped projections.  You can see them in the photo near where the wings emerge from the thorax.   

I was once more adept at identifying flies.  Between leaving school and starting at University, I worked for an engineering firm called Henry Simon that was developing the "Insect-o-cutor".  This consisted of a UV light which attracted flying insects which were then zapped by a high voltage grid and fell into a collection tray below.  Prototypes were installed into food factories, where they could kill insects without the use of chemicals.  I remember a visit to the Paxo Stuffing factory to collect the contents of the tray.  My unenviable job was to identify and count the different insects from their frazzled remains.  The smell was very distinctive! 

The document I was looking for was a press release showing me in my white coat doing that very job....alas, I have been through a lot of folders but haven't yet found it.  Watch this space!

A sticky business and an unexpected find

Twice a year I survey a few plots for the NPMS (National Plant Monitoring Scheme). All my plots are in the 1 km x 1 km square which has the Grid Reference NN7199 - which is handy as it is the square I live in.  I was up behind Craggan yesterday, looking at one of the plots which is on a boggy bit of moor.  The most obvious plant is bog cotton (Eriophorum vaginatum) which has fluffy white seedheads that wave around in the wind. This one is Hare's-tail Cottongrass.

Bog cotton or cottongrass

The wet areas have a carpet of sphagnum moss.  Look carefully at the picture below and you can see the moss in the centre. look even more carefully and you can see some red patches. Sphagnum can be red, but in this case the red patches are a different tiny plant.

Sphagnum moss and...?

Getting onto your knees and peering is the only way to see what it is. They are tiny, as the photo with my finger shows.

This is the leaf of a sundew (Drosera rotundifolia) which grows in wet nutrient-poor places and captures extra food by digesting flies which get caught on the sticky droplets. I didn't notice when I took the photo but there is a fly caught on this one. The green  oval coming from the centre of the leaves is the flower bud.

They are very beautiful in their tiny way, so I took lots of photos (using a clip on macro lens on my phone).

On the way home I went past a mossy rock face at the back of Craggan.

  I wasn't intending to look for lichens but I couldn't resist investigating.  I was glad I did as I found  a lichen I had never seen before.  It was minty green with black spots.

It turned out to be Peltigera brittanica which is found in Scotland  but not elsewhere in the UK. The edges are turned up and remind me of a poppadom. Here is a close up which gives a better idea of the colour. 

It grows browner when dry, and a much brighter green when wet and grows on mossy acidic rocks in moist woodland, which is exactly where I found it.

Up Glen Banchor

A walk up Glen Banchor will show you an interesting collection of flowers at the moment.  As you go over the first cattle grid, before the car parking lay-by, there is a clump of Mountain Everlasting (Antennaria dioica).  It has white flowers in this photo, but it also has a form with pink flowers.

Mountain Everlasting with some Bell Heather in the foreground and Alpine Bistort behind.

Pink Mountain Everlasting

White Mountain Everlasting

The dioica part of the name means that it  has separate male and female plants. It is unusual to find it up the Glen, and the main population is down by the Spey in the shingly areas. It likes dry areas with good drainage.

Further up the Glen, by the turnoff to the Calder footpath, stop and look at the wet area by the stream.  Wet areas are always worth a second look as interesting flowers grow there.  At the moment there are two kinds of orchids in this patch.  Heath Spotted-orchids (Dactylorhiza maculata) and Heath Fragrant-orchids (Gymnadenia borealis). 

Heath Spotted-orchids (pale pink) and Heath Fragrant-orchids (darker pink)

Heath Spotted-orchid in front and Heath Fragrant-orchid behind

There are also some plants that will only grow in wet areas, and they are all flowering at the moment.  

Butterwort showing the basal rosette of leaves

Butterwort seed

Butterwort flower

A tiny Sundew about to flower - you can see a Butterwort behind, and some Sphagnum moss

Sundew flower

Both these plants, Butterwort( (Pinguicula vulgaris) and Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia) catch insects on their leaves and then digest them to supplement their diet.

The Sundew is very small and you have to get down onto the ground to see it. Because they are flowering just now, it makes them easier to find.

Sundew

Sundew leaves

The Butterwort is much easier to spot as the pale green of the leaves stands out.

Butterwort plants