Lichens by water

If you are not interested in lichens, then this is not the post for you!  During the spell of hot weather when family were visiting, we went  to the Falls of Truim for some swimming, paddling, and lichen hunting.  I remember swimming there in the 1970s,  but it was not exactly as I remembered it (maybe some changes over 50 years...). The descent to the river was much steeper than expected (one approach even had a rope to hang on to!) and the dry, dusty surface was slippy.  Once down there though, the rocks were pleasantly warm to sit on, the water deliciously cooling, and there were several lichens to intrigue me.

The rocks that would normally be under water were scoured clean of any growth

Just above the sloping  rocks was a vertical step and several lichens grew there. 

A variety of different lichens on the vertical "step"

Most white crusts are too difficult for me to put a name to, unless they have some distinguishing features. One looks a possibility as it is covered in round fruiting bodies.

There was also a blackish one above it and an orange one below it.

There are several lichens that grow by streams and are often submerged when the water level rises so I am wondering if these might be some of them.

The most interesting lichen was on a vertical face higher up the slopes and was abundant.

 It looked like a complicated bundle of little leaves, quite contorted and a grey colour when dry.  I tried spraying it with water and it turned a muddy green - which turned out to be a useful characteristic.

Lichen when wet

A closer photo showed each lobe to be covered with tiny black pimples.

The black "pimples"

Some of the pimples have a small hole in the centre:

I think this is Dermatocarpon intestiniforme.  The muddy green colour when wet distinguishes it from a very similar lichen called Dermatocarpon luridum which goes bright green when wet.  The pimples are the fruits, called perithecia, mainly underneath but with the top surface emerging from the lobes to release the spores.

In August, I went down to the Durham Dales to meet up with my daughter and family.  Not much botany got done as I had an almost 3 year old to enjoy, but we went on plenty of walks.  On one walk near a village called Wolsingham, we enjoyed going over a stream via stepping stones. Some of the rocks in the stream had vivid green patches which we noticed and thought it might be a liverwort.  I didn't take a photo unfortunately... When I got home, I saw a very similar photo in a lichen book - it is probably Dermatocarpon lucidum which is the greener form of the Dermatocarpon by the Truim.  You can just about make it out on the photos. It is amazing how much detail is captured on a phone.

And the moral of the story is ALWAYS take a photo of anything interesting!

Creeping Lady's-tresses

My second find this week was very serendipitous. I was planning to walk the dog in a particular spot but someone else was parked there, so I went to another spot where I had walked many times before along a minor road.  I decided to wander at random in the pinewood plantation there, not expecting to do any botanising or find anything new, when a small white orchid growing on a tree stump among heather caught my eye. It was just a few inches high and there were no others nearby.  I got rather excited and took several photos.

The first find

 Walking on, I found a few more, and a few more and in the end I found hundreds throughout the wood!

I thought it might be Creeping Lady's-tresses which I had only seen once before at Loch-an-Eilean.  Checking in my Wild Flower book when I got home confirmed it.  Its scientific name is Goodyera repens.

I went back the next day and found even more of these tiny white spikes in the spaces between the rows of pines. A  long description of the plant can be found here and here.  It is mainly restricted to the Highlands in old pine forests, more than 95 years old.  It can spread by runners (hence the name- Creeping) so often appears in clumps, or by seed when it is pollinated by a bumble bee.

A group of Creeping Lady's tresses in a Scots Pine wood

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The flowers are arranged in a spiral but turn so that they all face one way.  This makes the back of the stalk look like a plait which is why it is called lady's-tresses.

The plaited back of the stem, also showing the scale like leaves up the stem.

The outer parts of the flowers are covered in sticky hairs.

The base of the stalk has oval leaves which have noticeable cross veins between the main veins.

Close up of basal leaf showing veins and cross-veins

Some of the runners give rise to rosettes of leaves which do not have a flower stalk - yet.  Unlike other orchids, the leaves are evergreen and persist over the winter.

I am always amazed at how even familiar places can reveal a new discovery, even when you think you have seen everything.  It certainly made my day, especially when I found that no one else had recorded this lovely rare plant growing there.

Fumitory

In the last few days I have found flowers locally that I don't see very often,  The first one was Common Fumitory (Fumaria officinalis) by the Tennis Courts in Newtonmore. It prefers chalky soil - which we don't have locally- or sand, so it is not as common here as the name suggests.  There are several Fumitories which are tricky to tell apart as you have to look at the shape of the sepals and the fruits.

Common Fumitory

A close-up of the flowers.  The sepal is the white mini-leaf at the base of the flower.

The narrow sepal of Common Fumitory

This fruit has a blunt end - Common Fumitory

I have also found another Fumitory up at Ballachroan.  This was Fumaria muralis - which sounds as if it should be called Wall Fumitory, but it is called Common Ramping-fumitory.  This is one of the commonest species found in the North. It has a wider sepal, though it is tricky to tell, and the fruit is more rounded with a narrow neck.

Common Ramping-fumitory

The wider sepal of Common Ramping-fumitory

The fruit of Common Ramping-fumitory

The name is a bit of a puzzle but Collins dictionary says:

 

C14: from Old French fumetere, from Medieval Latin fūmus terrae, literally: smoke of the earth

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!

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.