Strange things rising from the depths...

 Rather strange islands have been rising from the depths of Loch Imrich. Large black lumps.... It looks as if as if part of the loch bed has floated up.

The ducks are finding them useful resting places.  A tree has also appeared recently with its bare branches resembling bones.

Loch Imrich

I have tried, without success, to find any explanation of what causes these lumps of sediment to detach from the loch bed and rise to the surface.  All I can think of is that there is a build up of gas (methane) as the sediment under the water decomposes and eventually it pushes a layer of the loch bed upwards. If anyone knows, please tell me!

I received an email via the Jungle Telegraph - when botanist friends share discoveries - about

another weird and wonderful plant that I had never heard of, let alone seen. This was the Yellow Bird's-nest  which was seen at Coylumbridge this summer.  Off I went to have a look.

Yellow Bird'snest

These plants are about 4 inches  (10 cm tall). Earlier in the year, the plants would have had white flowers, but the ones in the photo are fruiting.  There are no leaves, just brown scales up the stalks.  With no green parts at all, how does it get any nutrients? The answer is that its roots link up with a fungus  To quote from http://sppaccounts.bsbi.org/content/monotropa-hypopitys.html

"recent research shows that it is actually epiparasitic, using Tricholoma fungi to extract nutrients from living trees in its vicinity"

It's that wood-wise-web again. The fungus does not gain anything from the plant as far as we know.  This plant was last recorded in the area in 1875!  Surprisingly, the plants were easily visible from the pavement on a road that is walked by hundreds of people every day so it is always worth keeping an eye out for anything new - you might make an important discovery. 

If you want to look it up, it is now called  Hypopites montropa, though in my older books it was called  Monotropa hypopites. Hypopites means "under pines" and it was indeed growing in some pine needles in a pinewood.

Around the Loch and further afield

 This post will be a bit of a look back as I have not posted for a while so some of the flowers may have finished. Round Loch Imrich, an orchid appeared by the path.

Common Spotted-orchid

This is a Common Spotted-orchid (Dactylorhiza fuchsii) but it is not at all common locally.  I have only ever found it at Loch Imrich, just one or two each year, and never in this spot.  The reason it is not common  for us is because it likes calcareous, basic soils (i.e. on the alkaline side).  The silted area at the end of the Loch must be basic whereas most of our soil is acid to neutral. The orchids we see most of are those that like acid soils, like Heath Spotted-orchid.  How do you tell the difference?   Look at the lower part of the flower, the lip. 

 

You can see in the photo that this one has three pointed lobes, well separated, and with the middle lobe the longest. So this is Common Spotted-orchid.

In the picture below of Heath Spotted-orchid (Dactylorhiza maculata) the lip of the flower is much broader and only has a tiny tooth shaped lobe in the centre.

Heath Spotted-orchid

It's not often I find  a flower locally that is new to me so it is quite exciting when I do. While walking on the Badenoch Way near Dalraddy, I saw a beautiful seed head. It was a bit like a Dandelion seed head but each seed had a parachute that was like an inside-out umbrella.

 This is Goat's-beard (Tragopodon pratensis) and has a yellow flower, though I did not get to see one. All I saw were closed up flowers.

This is because it was the afternoon, and apparently the flowers only open in morning sunshine, which gives it its other name of "Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon." 

It is not surprising that I had not seen it before as it is scarce locally. Here's the map of where it has been recorded (from BSBI site).  Each little square shows where it has been found and you can see that it is not common locally, and gets more common as you travel south.

Distribution of Goat's-beard

Here is a blown up section of our area.  The arrow points to a green square, which is the record that I sent in last week.  The pale pink one near it is a record from Kingussie in 1971.  So if you see it in Kingussie, let me know! 

More from the Golf Course

 Although the orchids are a great attraction, there are other beauties on the Golf Course and along the Spey. July is a great month for seeing them.

Beside the Spey looking towards Kingussie and Creag Beag

A group of Melancholy Thistle with their silver backs to the leaves

Melancholy thistle bud and flower

Melancholy Thistle (Cirsium heterophyllum) has single flower heads and has no nasty prickles at all, unlike the other thistles.  The second part of the name -heterophyllum- means "two sorts of leaves" as the leaves can have different forms. Some have straight edges and some have fingerlike lobes.

All the leaves have a woolly underside that looks white and is visible from a distance.

A few posts ago I talked about finding Red Clover on a housing estate in Inverness.  There is plenty of Red Clover (Trifolium pratense) around the Golf Course and Wildcat Trail:

Red Clover - note the three leaves just under the flower, often with a white v

There, is also a similar, less common look-alike: Zig-zag Clover (Trifolium medium) The flower is a brighter pink and does not have any leaves immediately under the flower.

Zig-zag Clover

The Globeflower (Trollius europaeus) is also blooming just now but is already forming seedheads. You can read more about it in this post.

Globeflower and seedhead

The flowers grow quite easily from seed so I am hoping they will establish in my wildflower lawn.

A trip around Newtonmore Golf Course - just the orchids!

 This post will be a bit different as it is just a record of some of the flowers I saw on the circular walk along the Golf Course and back along the Spey. The orchids are blooming, as are lots of other flowers, so it is well worth a walk round.

I saw at least 5 different kinds of orchids.  The most uncommon one was the Small-white Orchid (Pseudorchis albida) so I counted them and saw 26, all in a particular area in the rough at the side of one of the fairways.

Small-white Orchid with Yellow Rattle in front and behind

The other orchids were too numerous to count.  Northern Marsh-orchid (Dactylorhiza purpurella)(like the one in my "lawn"), is such a deep purple that it is easy to spot. In fact, I even spotted some in the road verge from the car when driving past the Wildlife Park on the back road between Kincraig and Kingussie. 

There were plenty of Greater Butterfly-orchid (Platanthera  chlorantha) and Heath Fragrant-orchid (Gymnadenia borealis) as well. 

Northern Marsh-orchid and Heath Fragrant-orchid

 Greater Butterfly-orchid

Heath Spotted-orchid

Another Heath Spotted-orchid? or maybe a hybrid.

There was one very large orchid which is often a sign of a hybrid between two different species. Hybrids tend to be more vigorous (think of  the F1 seeds you buy for the garden.) 

I saw several other plants which I will talk about about in my next post.

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!