Two nice surprises

 I have been attempting to convert a lawn into a wildflower meadow over the last two years.  I am taking a "slowly, slowly" approach and just seeing what comes up, though I have sown Yellow Rattle and Devil's Bit Scabious which are becoming established.  Of their own accord, Meadow Buttercups, Heath Bedstraw, Germander Speedwell, Fox and Cubs and  Cat's-ear have appeared as well as a multitude of grass species.  But the best appearance so far was a single orchid:

Northern Marsh-orchid (Dactylorhiza purpurella)

I have no idea how it got here.  The lawn had been regularly mowed for many years by the previous owner so had this plant kept trying to grow and been mown down each time? The same species of orchid  grows on the golf course but that is a fair distance away for seed to have travelled. (I  walked around the Golf Course 10 days ago and there were plenty of orchids either blooming or in bud, so now would be a good time to walk round.)

I have been stuck at home since catching Covid after a trip to London. However, before I tested positive, I went for a walk up Glen Banchor and saw an insect I had never seen before. It was on an old fallen tree. Can you spot it?

Spot the insect...

Here's a closer look.

This is a view from the back end - the head is at the top.  I can't help thinking that the two shiny black blobs at the rear end are meant to fool any predators that this is really the head end of a bigger insect.

To get an idea of size, here is a video with my finger for scale.

It is quite hairy so looks a bit like a cross between a bee and a beetle.  In fact, it is a Bee Beetle (Trichius fasciatus) and its larvae develop in old rotten birch logs so it may have either been wanting to lay eggs or had just "hatched."  Or maybe it was just visiting! They are uncommon but are usually found on flowers (which they eat). According to my book, they also make a buzzing sound when they fly.  So keep your ears and eyes open and let me know if you see one.

Gadding about

 Since I last posted, I have travelled about more in the last month than I have all year. First was a trip to Inverness to transport a friend who needed an operation at Raigmore hospital. This meant an early start and all day in Inverness until she was able to be discharged. An ideal opportunity to do some botanising in Inverness, rather than rushing around the shops.

I checked the online database of the BSBI to see which areas had not been surveyed much. This database is free to access for anyone and gives a list of the species that people have recorded. As a member of the public, you can look at a 2km square and see what plants occur. As a recorder, I have been granted special access and I  looked at the 1 km squares around Inverness. (You need the Grid Reference to search). NH6744 did not have many plants recorded so I decided to go and look there.  This is the area to the NW of Raigmore.

NH6744

At first sight, I could see why there were not many records. It is a housing area and the pavement edges have all been kept very bare either by weedkiller or neat homeowners. Wildflowers need a bit of neglect to thrive! I found a parking space by some flats which were surrounded by (unweeded!) gravel. The first thing that caught me eye was an ENORMOUS red clover, much bigger than the usual plants I see being about 40 cm tall.

The large red clover

Checking that it was Red Clover, I looked at the shape of the stipules - this is the name for little leaf-like growths that appear at the base of leaf stalks. You can see them in the above photo if you follow down from the clover leaf to where the leaf stalk joins the main stem.

Stipule - purple veined with a bristle point

I was happy that it was Red Clover (there is a similar plant called Zigzag Clover) but it still didn't look like the ones I see regularly.  A bit more research in the doorstop of a book called "Stace" revealed that there is an agricultural variety that is more vigorous and had hollow stems so I cut the stalk in half.

Hollow stem

So that convinced me that I had agricultural Red Clover (Trifolium pratense var. sativa) which was a new one for me. How it got to the gravel in front of the flats was a mystery...

A more promising spot was a bridge over the Mill Burn.

A selection of ferns on the bridge over Mill Burn

There were at least 4 different ferns in  a shady spot over the burn.

Maidenhair Spleenwort (Asplenium trichomanes)

Wall Rue (Asplenium ruta-muraria)

Hart's-Tongue (Asplenium scolopendrium) and another fern that I cannot identify

Interestingly, I saw exactly the same community on my trip to West London (Hampton Hill). This was on a wall over the railway and was very different as it was hot and dry and not where I expected to find ferns. The yellow flower is Yellow Corydalis (Pseudofumaria lutea) which likes growing on walls.

Other trips involved a look at plants on the banks of the River Tummel:

Fellow botanists in a field of cowslips

When I got home from London, there was a surprise waiting for me....  find out more in another post!

Maples

 I was out looking for a particular brown lichen that grows on trees and spotted some on a tree at the edge of Newtonmore Golf Course. At first, I thought the tree was a Sycamore but on looking more closely, the leaf and flowers were  a bit different.

The flowers start off  with petals, which then close up after pollination and form little balls.

Flowers starting to form seeds

Seeds - helicopters- forming.

The leaves have long thin points. This is the Norway Maple (Acer platanoides) and there are plenty alongside the Upper Golf Course on Golf Course Road.  It is closely related to the Sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus) which is also in the Acer family. The Sycamore is usually a much bigger tree. here are the leaves side by side for comparison.

Norway Maple on the left, Sycamore on the right

The flowers on the Sycamore are very different as well. Instead of stalks with one flower at the end, there are up to 100 dangling down in a bunch (panicle).

Each flower has stamens (with pollen) around the outside, and the femaie parts which will form the seeds in the centre, covered with white hairs.

It is hard to see exactly what is in the centre without a bit of magnification.  It looks as though there is a central column with 3 curls on the top, which will be the stigma (the female part that is fertilised by pollen, usually by bees in this case) and then 3 protrusions which will grow into seeds with wings.

The three-fold symmetry surprised me as I thought the helicopter seeds came in twos... But maybe there are pairs and singles?  I will have to check  later in the season to find out.

And what about that brown lichen?  Well, I did find it but I am still working on the photos so that will have to be another post!

Spring - the nice and the nasty

 Spring has definitely arrived, with blossom and  leaves on the trees and spring bulbs and dandelions flowering.  The catkins opened up to shed their pollen:

The fritillaries in my garden are just finishing:

Their name of Snake's Head lily could be a reference to the chequered pattern, or maybe the shape of the seed head:

So that is some of the "nice" - so what  about the "nasty"? 

Let me tell you about New Zealand flatworms.... I have a thriving population in my garden, which I think arrived with some horse manure a couple of years ago.  I have been fighting a war of attrition against them, going out each day and collecting them from under stones, wood or compost bags left on the ground to attract them. They are nocturnal and rest up during the day in dark wet places. Last year I kept a tally of how many I removed and it was in the hundreds.  And those are just the ones I found! It sounds a lot - it is a lot- but imagine if you were collecting slugs, you would not be surprised at those numbers. I don't think I will ever eradicate them from the garden but at least I am limiting the damage they do.  They eat earthworms. And I want to keep my earthworms and the job they do to keep the soil healthy. Darwin found them worthy of study. You can download his work here

Flatworms are not the most attractive of creatures, being slimy and reminiscent of leeches in the way they move. They are remarkably resilient being able to survive for a year without food.  They mate and produce eggs with multiple little worms inside.  Being unattractive undoubtedly influences my reaction as I am quite happy to see a blackbird or robin eat my worms. However, if the flatworms continue to multiply unchecked, they would eradicate the earthworms from my garden. So I am on the hunt!

Flatworm at rest during the day (with a cutlery fork)

Armed with an old yogurt bucket and cutlery fork, I lift up stones, wood and plastic and collect the flatworms which are underneath. They like the dark and wet and leave a sticky mucus on the ground which helps to spot them. When I have collected a batch, I kill them quickly with boiling water. They die at temperatures above 30C, which is one way to sanitise any plants in pots that you bring into the garden.

A batch of flatworms awaiting dispatch.

I recently bought a UV torch as some lichens fluoresce at a wavelength of 365nm.  It was rather a surprise to see the reaction with a flatworm which glowed turquoise:

Flatworms under UV light

And finally, if you are not too squeamish, here is a video:

Something interesting in the woodpile!

 We had a delivery of a pile of miscellaneous sections of tree trunks for chopping up for the fire, some of which must have been sitting around for a while. On one pine section, a small round growth  about 1cm in diameter appeared with a white border and a beautiful maze like pattern in the centre.

More patches appeared. Our best guess was that this was a fungus with a sterile white border and a spore producing section in the middle.

The photos were taken with a mobile phone and the white circle around the photos is a cut down plastic cup which works really well to keep your phone steady at at a fixed distance while you focus. Not knowing much about fungi, a search on the internet suggested it might be Antrodia ramentacea Honeycomb Crust which seems to be quite uncommon with just 11 records in Scotland, so it would be good to get an ID. In fact, advice from the Facebook page of the British Mycological Society put us right - it was not  Honeycomb Crust but the more common Conifer Mazegill (Gloeophyllum sepiarum).  This is fairly typical of an inexperienced beginner jumping to the wrong (more rare option)!  Conifer Mazegill is a bracket fungus so seeing it in this form was a bit confusing. However, later small brown brackets did appear on the side of the log.

Top surface of bracket

Underside of bracket showing the gills

Conifer Mazegill is much more common, and there are 239 records in Scotland - though none for Newtonmore so maybe worth recording after all.  The information on what is recorded is freely available on the NBN Atlas, for all sorts of animals and plants, not just fungi.  This fungus produces brown rot in wood. However, it has also been investigated for inhibiting tumour growth in some forms of cancer.

Update: After an expert checked the photo, this is probably Lintneria trachyspora

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