Yarrow, Sneezewort and a rare find

There are some flowers that appear late in the season and let you know that autumn is almost here - Devils-bit Scabious, Harebells and Sneezewort. You are probably more familiar with the first two, both being an attractive shade of blue, whereas Sneezewort could be mistaken for a slightly larger Yarrow. They are both in the same family, Yarrow being Achillea millefolium with feathery leaves as the second half of the name suggests, and Sneezewort being Achillea ptarmica, where the second part of the name comes from the Greek for sneeze.  Sneezewort leaves are completely different being narrow and toothed, and apparently if dried and powdered they cause sneezing. The other difference, apart from the leaf shape, is that the Sneezewort flowers are bigger.

Yarrow - smaller flowers, feathery leaves

Sneezewort flowers

Sneezewort leaves

On our trip to Loch Laggan, the small island was covered in Sneezewort, blowing in the wind.

 Whilst I was looking for other flowers, I noticed a plant with spotty leaves and got quite excited thinking I had found a new plant.

The  spotty plant

Looking at it more closely and at some of the other photos I had taken, I realised it was a stunted Sneezewort suffering from some sort of infection.  The  black spots were on the stem as well as the leaves. And when magnified the spots were bumps rather than just the colour of the leaf.

The black spots on the leaves

Fortunately I took a sample back home with me.

Infected plant on a 1 cm squared background

Why fortunately? Remember the expert on fungi that I mentioned in my last post? Prof Bruce Ing? He took the sample away was able to identify the fungus. It's  Schizothyriana*ptarmicae. What, you have never heard of it? Well, neither had I.  Even more surprisingly, it got ZERO hits on Google.  It was keen to substitute schizophrenia instead. 

 Surely, I thought, there must be something on the internet that mentions it? Doesn't the internet have absolutely everything there somewhere.... Well, I tried searching with Google Scholar (which searches research articles) and there were a few hits for articles from Poland and Germany. It turns out that it is very rare (23 records in UK) so Bruce has taken the sample away for it to go in a collection. Fame at last!

*UPDATE -I was talking to Bruce today and it turned out there was a typo on the list I was sent and it should have been Schizothyrioma (pronounced with a soft ch) which got 407 hits on Google!

A very botanical weekend

The beautiful sunny weather last weekend was ideal for some botany activities I had planned. On the Saturday, I took a group of people from the Inverness Botany group up Glen Banchor to look at lichens.  Our first stop was an old dry stone wall by the first cattle grid.  This has so many different lichens on it that you could consider it as a lichen hunter's heaven - or hell - as it is covered in crustose species that I can't identify! I had picked out some of the easier ones to spot and put them on a help sheet:

 Even then, you have to get close up and personal when trying to see the features.

A hand lens, x10, or a little device that clips on your phone can really help you to see the details.

Here are two favourites (anything with blood in the name seems to be popular!):

Blood spot lichen (Ophioparma ventosa) growing on the stone wall

Bloody Heart Lichen (Mycoblastus sanguinarea) growing on a birch tree

The Bloody Heart Lichen has black fruits (apothecia) on it but when scratched, it is orangey-red underneath.  This is because you are exposing an  orange alga that coexists with the lichen  (Trentopohlia).  Most algae are green.  Lichens have (at least) two components: a fungus and an alga.  The fungus gives the lichen its name and provides a home for the alga. The alga produces food by photosynthesis.

On the Sunday, I joined in a Fungus Foray around Newtonmore with Prof Bruce Ing. I was amazed at how many fungi a discerning eye can spot.  There were over 50 around Loch Imrich! 

The undersides have a variety of gills and pores from which the spores fall. Apparently a fungus has to grow very accurately vertical as otherwise the spores would get stuck on the sides of the tubes etc when the spores are released!

Bruce also provided a different ID for the log pile fungus (post has been updated) as Lintneria trachyspora.

Bruce is an expert on Slime Moulds and Mildews and for the first time ever I was delighted that so many plants in my garden had mildew! Bruce took away lots of sample leaves, as apparently each family of plants has a different species of mildew ... who knew?

And finally, a visit to a friend's garden produced lots of sightings of butterflies, so here is one I have not shown before. A Peacock (Inachis io). The caterpillars feed on nettles, and the adult butterflies overwinter in sheds and outhouses.

Sea Plantains inland

 If you travel between Newtonmore and Kingussie (a distance of about 3 miles) you can either go by car along the A86 or use the bike path which runs alongside it. 

View from Bike path looking towards Newtonmore

At the moment, there is a very obvious brown strip on the road verge made up of many brown spikes. In the photo above it is just visible between the white van and the post. In the photo below, it is the grey brown stripe across the middle  of the photo.

The colour is made up of the fruiting spikes of the Sea Plantain (Plantago maritima). I took a picture from the bottom of the slope so it is not very clear:

I thought I would have better photos already on my computer - and maybe I have - but I can't find them! It normally grows by the sea but a few plants started appearing at the side of the road a few years ago, and now it has completely taken over the verge for almost a mile. When driving the back road from Kingussie to Aviemore, it is easy to spot on the side of the road there as well. It can tolerate salt which explains its success.

Today I was walking near Ralia and there were a few plants there as well but not good subjects for a photo as the recent tar and chipping had covered everything in white dust!

A rather dusty Sea Plantain flower with yellow stamens

You can see that it has yellow stamens which makes it easy to distinguish from the other plantains which have white ones. There is an interesting post on the edibility of Sea Plantains here.

A more colourful event was the visit of a Small Tortoiseshell butterfly to my Buddleia in the garden.

Another Lepidoptera

Just like buses, nothing new for a while and then two at once! I was tidying up the greenhouse, removing some tomato and cucumber leaves that had started to wither,  and when I had finished I noticed a surprise on my arm!

This is when it is handy to have a mobile phone as I could extract it from my pocket  and  take the photo one handed. I don't know much about moths but I do have a book of photos - The Collins Complete Guide to British Insects. I have found that if you don't have a photo of what you have seen, it is remarkably difficult to remember exactly what it looked like!

This is a good book for matching photos rather than using keys, but there are an awful lot of moths...

Starting at page 156, the photos go on until page 270, and further if you want to see the caterpillars.  Given my level of ID skills for moths, it was just a matter of scanning each page of photos until I saw something similar.  It was nearly a hundred pages later that I found it!

Angle Shades Moth - 3rd photo down on the right

It is an Angle Shades (Phlogophera meticulosa). Not one I have seen before but  apparently occurs all over Britain.

A new butterfly

 Whilst doing some gardening on a sunny day recently, a butterfly alighted on one of my Shasta daisies and was different from any I had seen before. The silhouette was more like a leaf. And it had a tiny white mark like a comma. Which was a clue as it turned out to be a Comma butterfly, and is the only one with that jagged silhouette.

The wings were orange with brown spots.

I find it quite hard to take decent photos of butterflies with my phone as they fly away when you get close, so here is a picture from my (old -1987) Reader's Digest Butterfly book.

Interestingly, the distribution shown in my book is just in the South of England. Obviously things have changed in the last 30 years! It's scientific name is  Polygonia c-album.  I was going to say that I have no idea what the c- is for when it dawned on me that the c-album means white c shape.

...And strange things falling from the heights

 On the same walk around Loch Imrich, I came across a lot of unfamiliar cones on the ground.  Well, to be more exact, half cones.

Half a large cone amongst smaller larch cones

They were large - the half cone was about 2 inches (10 cm) long and quite solid and heavy. The broken surface was a startling pink.

The other end of the cone was sticky with a blob of resin oozing from the centre.

The side of the cone  was green and each section had a sharp tail poking out.

As I only had half a cone, I was not sure whether I had a top or a bottom half. Looking around, all the half cones on the ground looked similar and I could not find a matching half to make a complete cone.

I had never seen cones like this before, so I looked around to see what trees were nearby. There were the usual Birch and Rowan, but the only conifer was a very tall one with a grey trunk. The trunk was covered with blisters, some of which were weeping resin.

I looked up but could hardly see the top of the tree and the photo I took is very poor but it did tell me that there were big cones at the top and they were pointing up. (Whether the cones point up or hang down can be a useful characteristic when trying to identify a conifer.) 

The cones are the pale green blobs in the blown up section 

Having collected as much information as I could, I took a couple of half cones home. A young girl came to see what I was doing and was very taken with the cones and started stuffing them in her pockets.  I did warn her that they were quite sticky! As I was walking the dog, I had a handy plastic poo bag to put them in.

Now I wanted to get an ID. There are plenty of keys for identifying conifers, but they often ask you about the buds and needles and there were none within reach. I had once done a workshop with conifer expert Matt Parratt and he gave us a useful sheet on Silver Firs. Here's a quote:

"Cones are always upright on the branches, usually right at the top of the tree, and they disintegrate in situ leaving a central core.  For this reason cone characters are not easily observable but looking for shed cone scales beneath the tree and using binoculars can be helpful."

Unusually, the cones had broken and fallen - high winds? Very dry weather?  I decided the tree was a Noble Fir (Abies procera - though it  can also be called Abies nobilis which is easier to remember) which has huge cones. Did I have a top or a bottom of the cone? Looking at pictures of Noble Fir cones, the sharp green points point downwards on the cone so the halves that had fallen were all tops, which makes sense if the cones had broken in half on the tree.

I was able to detach one of the cone scales. The seed is at the bottom and the green "tail" is on a separate joined flap (bract) which I have folded back in the right-hand picture.

There is a YouTube video by Matt Parratt on identifying conifers. 

Introduction to Conifer ID

 He talks about and shows pictures of Noble Fir cones around 32 minutes into the video if you want  to hear from the expert. The video is on the BSBI channel and there are lots more botanical presentations there.

Update

I managed to get a better picture of the upright cones on the tree today:

Update: October 2022.  The tree has been chopped down! But there are plenty more Noble firs in front of the Highlander Hotel in Newtonmore.

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.