Up near Geal Charn

 I benefit from having botanical spies around the area... Geoff who runs Balsporran Cottages B&B just by the A9, south of Dalwhinnie, got in touch to say one of his guests had spotted Lesser Twayblade on one of the tracks below Geal Charn.  It was a nice day, so we packed a picnic and set off to see what we could find.  There is a public car park just off the A9 (which is worth a visit on its own account as it is the site of lots of orchids, including an hybrid one.) Here is a photo from 2 years ago as the orchids were not out when I went last week.

To get to the walking tracks, you have to walk through the grounds of Balsporran Cottage and across the railway.  On the right of the track are some tumbledown cottages which have a selection of lichens, most of which I couldn't name but there were two kinds of Umbilicaria, which like upland areas.

Umbilicaria polyphylla in the centre and the yellow patches of map lichen (Rhizocarpon geographicum)

Umbilicaria cylindrica  with the frilly edges

Walking along the track through mainly Heather and Cowberry, I found just one patch of Lesser Twayblade (Neottia cordata) with 5 flowering spikes.

Lesser Twayblade

These are orchids but not at all like their flashy relatives.  Dull in colour and only about 10cm high, they grow nestled in the heather. My hand in the photo gives you a better idea of the scale.

A close up photo of the flower shows why it is called twayblade:

Another nice find was some Stags-horn Clubmoss (Lycopodium clavatum) with its two fingered fruiting bodies. To read more about Clubmosses see this post.

Woodruff and Willie (Sweet and Sticky)

 I have been doing some weeding in my flower border as two plants are spreading and taking over.  They are both in the bedstraw family, so their scientific names start with Galium. They also have the same arrangement of leaves, in a whorl (circle) around the stem.

Woodruff on the left with flowers, Goosegrass on the right with no flowers.

Because they look quite similar, you have to be careful when weeding.  The one on the right is Goosegrass (Sticky Willie or Cleavers) (Galium aparine) and is a "weed" as it planted itself.  It is an annual and dies in the winter but it produces plenty of round seeds with tiny hooks on.  If you have a dog, you will know that they stick in the fur and have to be teased out. I went back in the garden to find a seed to photograph but as I write (mid June) the plants have not flowered yet, so no seeds.  This photo from a previous year shows the tiny white, 5 petalled flowers which emerge from the axils (where the leave meets the stem).

Flowering Goosegrass showing the hooks on the leaves and stem

Closeup of hooks on stem

The one on the left is Sweet Woodruff (Galium odoratum) which is already flowering.  It is perennial and comes up year after year. I planted this deliberately but it is taking over! It forms large patches by sending out rhizomes - white roots. I have read that it also has bristly seeds but I have never noticed that.  So that is two seeds to look out for and photograph.

Sweet Woodruff

Goosegrass

UPDATE: It is now mid July and there are seeds on the plants so I am posting a picture.  Much to my surprise, both of the seeds have plenty of hooks. The difference in size is just a feature of maturity.

Woodruff (on left) and Goosegrass (on right)

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.

A bit more from the A9

In the last post, I went to look for what was flowering along the A9, but much to my surprise I found that there were some unexpected lichens as well. Because the new part of the A9 near the Wildlife park has been built through woodland, there are still some older trees.  There was a group of old aspens that I looked at.

Aspens by the A9

The ecological survey before building the road must have checked these trees as two of them had a metal disc with a number attached - presumably to protect them from workmen with a chainsaw!

There were woodland plants like Wood Anemone and Common Dog Violet in the grass, but I wanted to see what lichens there were.  On a fallen log was a lichen I had never seen before.

It looked like a series of dark brown lobes (leaves) with some lighter brown structures that look a bit like fingernails  (they are apothecia - the spore producing parts).  Looking more closely, there were lots of little peglike growths as well (they are called isidia and are another way a lichen can spread).

"Fingernails" (out of focus) and the tiny pegs (isidia)

The lichen turned out to be Peltigera praetextata and it was growing on the trunk of a live tree as well.

I had never seen that Peltigera before, but there is a common one that grows in lawns, or on grassy or mossy surfaces:

Peltigera membranacea

It will prefer lawns that don't receive too much care in the form of weedkillers and fertilisers.  A benefit of a bit of neglect! As it is No Mow May again,  I am hoping some wildflowers will appear in my lawn soon. The lawn a few doors down from me has a nice show of Slender Speedwell (Veronica filiformis.)

For more on Speedwells check this post. 

The common name for the Peltigera group is Dog lichen. They have little projections underneath that look like dog's teeth so in the past they thought it would cure rabies.

A9-ning

 North of Kingussie is a stretch of the "new" A9 where it has been upgraded into dual carriageway (much to the relief of locals as now you can overtake safely). There is also a cycle path alongside the North bound carriageway so you can safely have a look at the verge and slopes to see what is growing there. I feel some affinity to the A9 as in 1976 we moved up here to work on the "new" A9 between Calvine and Drumochter.

Along with husband and dog, I parked by the Wildlife Park access road and headed North along the bike path. I was on a mission to find Danish Scurvy Grass (Cochlearia danica) as there had been a request to check how far it had spread along the A9.  This is normally a coastal plant as it does not mind salt, but the same conditions arise alongside roads that are salted so it has spread along the A9 from Inverness. The red squares on the map show the places that it has been noticed and recorded  - and you can see that there is a big gap along the A9 from North of Aviemore to Newtonmore. It is very likely that it is growing in many more places, but no one has recorded it. 

Map showing places where Danish Scurvy Grass has been recorded (from BSBI)

I have found it in Newtonmore, and it is flowering at the moment alongside the wall of the Balavil Hotel. There are quite a few small white flowered plants around just now, but the ivy shaped leaf helps to distinguish it from the others.

Danish Scurvy Grass

leaf and buds

In fact , I did not find any on the stretch that I walked, but if you see any, let me know!

 Although I did not find what I went for, I did collect two dandelions to ID, both of which turned out to be new records for East-Inverness-shire, and one (Taraxacum exsertum) was the furthest north record in the UK.

Taraxacum vastisectum

Taraxacum exsertum (it has very pointed ends to the leaves)

Hang on a minute, I hear you say, aren't they both the same? Well, no, but the differences in dandelion microspecies are quite hard to spot which is why every one is verified by a referee who will confirm or correct your ID from a series of photos of the different features. I managed to ID the T. exsertum correctly but had to be put right for the T. vastisectum.

There were a few more interesting things to report from the A9 excursion, but I will save them for another post.

Warm days, cold nights

 I have really been enjoying the recent sunny weather with clear blue skies, followed by a frost at night.  This year the plants seem quite slow to get going though the yellow ones are the first to appear.  celandines, as in the last post, and today while walking in Kingussie by the Gynack, I saw my first Coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara).

Coltsfoot

The scientific name comes from the Latin, "tussis", which means a cough and it is still used to treat coughs and respitatory problems.  Just because something grows wild does not make it a safe natural remedy.  There is an interesting website about the uses of plants at Plants for a Future.

The other yellow flower appearing is the dandelion.  I saw a strange example in Kingussie. Two (or three) flowers have fused together to produce this monster flower and wide stem.  This happens occasionally in many flowers and is called fasciation:

 Dandelions are very common everywhere and you might think that they weren't that interesting for botanists.  You would be wrong! There are hundreds of microspecies of dandelion which have their own scientific names and are subtly different from each other.  This has happened because most dandelions now do not need to be fertilised by another dandelion to produce seed, though maybe they did a very long time ago.  This means that every seed that a particular dandelion produces will be genetically identical to its parent and so any differences are perpetuated. You might have noticed that pulling the head off a dandelion does not stop the flower producing seed (clocking).Bees and other insects visit the flower for pollen and nectar though.

Outside Kingussie High School, I noticed some bright orange patches on a concrete fence post. I was interested in the two near the bottom of the photo.

`These were lichens so I took a few photos.  I use a clip on macro lens on my phone to get a closer photo. The yellow one at the top is Xanthoria parietina and is a very common leafy lichen on trees and walls. I was more interested in the bright orange ones near the bottom.

This is a crustose lichen and probably a Caloplaca, perhaps Caloplaca saxicola.  The round circular shapes in the middle produce spores, and the finger-like structures at the edge are the lichen growing outwards. It is stuck fast to the cement and can't be pulled off without chipping at it with a chisel. Some lichens prefer to grow on acidic rocks like granite.  Most of the local rocks and boulders here are acidic.  Other lichens like a more alkaline  surface like cement and concrete.  This Caloplaca likes to grow on basic (non-acidic) stone so I can only find it on cement and mortared walls.  If we lived in an area with limestone or chalk it would grow on local rocks.

Here is are more similar lichens growing on a breezeblock wall in Newtonmore:

Caloplaca saxicola

Caloplaca decipiens

More Signs of Spring

Today I saw my first Celandines in flower. 

Lesser Celandine

Their scientific name is Ranunculus ficaria.  The buttercup also belongs to the Ranunculus family and you can see the similarity in the shiny yellow petals. Remember holding a buttercup under a friend's chin to see if they liked butter?  Which they would if the sun was shining and the yellow reflected off the petals.

The Gorse, Ulex europaeus, is another early bloomer, but the petals are a more lemony colour and are protected by fearsome spikes. You certainly would not want to hold that near your chin!

Gorse

I was walking by the River Calder when I saw some shiny green beetles on a large rock.   They were quite small, maybe 5mm,  and they don't look like much until you get a close up.  Then the colours were stunning in the sun.

They obligingly stayed put while I photographed them with the macro lens attachment on my phone, and they are fantastic - the Newtonmore scarab!

Although it was a beautifully sunny day, there were some shady areas that were just as pleasant, especially with the sound of water running over the rocks of this small burn that crosses the track.

If you have been following my posts during the winter, you will be wondering why there is no mention of lichens yet.  Continuing with the bright yellow theme, here is the brightest yellow lichen around,  Chrysothrix candelaris. Chrysothrix means "Golden Hair. 

 Usually the yellow lichens have a chemical sunscreen called parietin that gives them their colour, but this lichen grows on the shady side of the tree and  the colour is thought to be from chemicals that protect it from being eaten. Parietin has been investigated as a potential anti-cancer drug.  You can read more about it here.