All in black...

 It has been a long time since my last post - partly because I have been busy and also because there are not many wildflowers out at this time of the year, so I have been looking at lichens instead. Although this blog has the title of Newtonmore Wildflowers, my interests have expanded since then but maybe not everyone who reads this is as fascinated by lichens as I have become.  And I did not want to bore you too much with my lichen explorations... but in the absence of any other news, here goes!

I was helping some friends move house from a rather isolated cottage on the back road to Laggan, and took the opportunity to get a few twigs to look at (for lichens) and managed to find and identify two that were new to me. They were both quite small  crustose lichens, which just means that they grow as a thin crust on the bark.  The first one was a white crust with black fruiting bodies (apothecia) on it:

It's quite hard to identify these kind of lichens as there are loads with white crusts and black fruiting bodies. One way is to take a slice of the black discs and look at it under a microscope.  This is easier to say than to do as they are tiny - just a millimetre across! Here's what I saw:

The top layer is the visible top of the apothecium which looked black in the first photo.  The white area underneath has the fancy name of the hymenium, and is where the lichen develops spores, ready to shoot them out to spread itself.  The spores are very obvious here as  the dark lines are groups of spores. With more magnification, you can see the structure of each spore.

They look like beans but have a line across the middle  This helped me decide on the ID - Amandinea punctata.

The second lichen on the twig looked very different.  It was still only a tiny crustose patch but it looked a dirty brown-green.

Those round structures are fruiting bodies (apothecia) as well but this time they are like jam tarts with a different colour rim around the dark centre. Out came the razor blade again, and I took a slice through one of them.

The brown bit along the bottom is the bark, and the slice (or section) shows that this lichen also has dark spores with a line across the middle though the shape and size were a bit different. The red bar on the photo is 10 microns long which is one hundredth of a millimetre.  So that's why you need a microscope!

This lichen turned out to be Rinodina sophodes.

Another trophy from the removals was a piece of black plastic from the hen's enclosure roof, which was covered with lichens, so I couldn't resist taking a piece. You may think it's a bit odd to be enthused about a piece of plastic but it is covered with lichens for the curious mind to investigate!

I'll do another post to tell you what I have found on it so far, but the first thing I did was to shine a UV torch on it, and I'll leave you with the colourful result.

An Icy New Year

 New Year's Day was clear and frosty so I went for a walk on the Wildcat Trail along the Spey - mainly just for the walk, but I thought I would keep an eye out for any flowering plants for the New Year Plant Hunt.  I found not a single plant in flower....

I did see other things to admire though.  Some stunning views of the snowy hills:

The Cairngorms from Newtonmore Golf Course

 Some attractive ice patterns in the puddles:

Icy puddles

And for the first time, some Hair ice.

Hair Ice on a rotting log

Hair ice looks like white candyfloss.  There is a lot of information about it at the Met office site  here. They say it only forms in particular conditions: high humidity, a temperature below 0 °C and on rotten wood from a broad-leafed tree, and usually only between latitudes of 45°N  to 55°N (though Newtonmore is at 57°N). It looks like lots of very thin fibres made of ice.

If you put some in your hand, it melts away to water.  A man called Alfred Wegener suggested that it was linked to a specific fungus, though he did not know which one.  He had other good ideas as he discovered continental drift.  In 2015, 3 scientists proved him right and linked the formation of hair ice to a fungus called Exidiopsis effusa.

You can see a timelapse video of hair ice growing here.

New Year Plant Hunt and Conidiwhat?

 In the absence of plants flowering, I have been investigating lichens and fungi.  However, the BSBI have a New Year Plant Hunt which runs from 30 December to 2 January.  There is lots of information and ID guides here to get you going.  It's not just fun, it contributes to some research for the dates on which plants flower.

I must admit, as I live in a rather cold part of the country, the flowering plants at New Year are very few, but you might have more in your area.

I found an interesting Hazel twig last month. I don't see much Hazel locally, so I was pleased to find it as it  had a lichen species on it that I had not found before. Here's the twig:

Hazel twig

I know, it might not look that interesting, but wait and see..

First of all, just look at it in UV light. Some lichens glow bright orange, and some dull orange and some don't change at all

The new lichen for me was one called Arthonia radiata  which is covered in tiny black star shapes. These are the fruiting bodies that make spores.

One of the other lichens had the usual "jam tart" fruits but they had black spots on them.

I put one of the black spots under the microscope and this is what I saw:

I have made the photo quite big, but the black spots were tiny,  about a tenth of a millimetre or 100 microns.  Those little sausage shapes emerging from the hole are a kind of spore, called conidia. They are asexual spores - meaning they haven't got together with any other spores to swap DNA.  As you can see there are a lot of them! The black spots are a lichenicolous fungus, which just means that it is a fungus that likes to grow on a lichen.  For those that want to know, I think the lichen is Lecanora hybocarpa and the lichenicolous fungus (LF for short) is Vouauxiella ( that's a lot of vowels in a row!) lichenicola.

As life would have it, the next fungus I looked at was also producing conidia. This fungus was not a lichen, not even growing on a lichen, but on a dead birch stump.

The really abundant fungus is Turkey Tail, but the one I took home was a purple one on the left of this picture.

Purple jelly fungus (on the left)

When I squished a bit on a microscope slide, what did I see but .... 

...lots and lots of tiny conidia

A bit like buses... nothing comes along and then....

Cudweeds and Oxtongues - heading North!

I spent some of October down in West London, visiting family.  It was shirtsleeve weather down there, but is much colder up here now and we have had a few frosts and clear blue skies. This morning was particularly lovely with the frost on the grasses on the golf course.

Whilst down south, I refound  a plant that is very scarce in Scotland. I had found it in the same area in 2017 when visiting.  It was growing in the road by the kerb, so I had no hesitation in picking a sample to try and ID.  It looked like a cudweed, which are greyish fairly nondescript plants, and several varieties grow around Newtonmore.  This one just looked different to the ones I was familiar with. Here are some pictures from 2017:

2017 photos showing features for ID

When I identified the plant in 2017 it turned out to be Jersey Cudweed (was Gnaphalium luteoalbum now Laphangium luteoalbum) and had "Schedule 8" next to its name.  I'd never heard of Schedule 8 and had to look it up and was horrified to find that it was illegal to pick it! However, I think this is an example of legislation that is now out of date - although it was once confined to a small area of England, it is spreading.  It likes a sandy habitat and when I have seen it , it has been growing in the sand between paviours in drives that have block paving.  Presumably, wherever the sand was sourced from, it already had lots of seeds in it.  I saw the plant this year, in a different spot and, yet again, it was in paving.

Jersey Cudweed in paving

Distribution of Jersey Cudweed (from BSBI) showing mainly Southern distribution but spreading.

On this year's visit, I also found another unfamiliar plant.  I am sorry there is only one photo but I was mainly keeping up with grandchildren so no time to linger -  I just picked a bit to look at later!

It had a yellow flower and rather strange bumps on the leaves, and in the centre of each was a prickle.  This turned out to be Bristly Ox-tongue which has the difficult to pronounce scientific name- Helminthotheca echioides.

This is another southern species that is spreading north

Distribution of Bristly Oxtongue

Floods, Fans and Stagshorns

 Over a week ago, we had several days of continuous rain (while the South of England had a heat wave!) which resulted in the Spey flooding the adjoining land.  Flooding is a regular occurrence here as Badenoch (the name of our local area) is Baideanach in Gaidhlig which means the drowned land.  Usually it happens in the spring when rain coincides with melting snow. Newtonmore escaped with just the lower Golf Curse being flooded but it was more dramatic in Kingussie where the Shinty pitch was covered in at least a couple of metres of water, and we couldn't resist going to have a look.

We also went to look at the Spey from the Bridge to the South of Newtonmore and the mosses on the parapet looked particularly good with drops of water on their fruiting spikes.

Mosses on Spey Bridge parapet

Although I was aware that different lichens have a preference for either acid or alkaline substrates (the surfaces they grow on), I had never really thought about mosses doing a similar thing.  Mortar and concrete are alkaline and when I looked at a stone wall in the village, it was obvious that the mosses were preferring the mortared areas, and the lichens favoured the stone.

Mosses preferring to grow on the mortar

A few more fungi have appeared in the garden.  Some were the traditional toadstool type like these brightly coloured waxcaps. 

Butter Waxcap (Hygrocybe ceracea) and Scarlet Waxcap (Hygrocybe coccinea)

There were also some more unusual forms.  There was one that was a completely new form for me.

Looking in the books I thought it might be Violet Coral which sounded quite exciting as it is uncommon. I was wrong - it is an earthfan and has the less alluring name of Stinking Earthfan (Thelephora palmata).   To quote the Collins Complete Guide to Mushrooms and Toadstools, it is a "Coral-like fungus with a repulsive smell of putrid garlic." I don't think it was that bad but it did smell like drains or a dog-poo bin! It is widespread but also uncommon so I should be grateful that it decided to come up in my "meadow" aka lawn.  Thanks go to Liz Holden for the IDs.

There are some common fungi with finger like growths.  This one was growing on a slice of wood:

Candlesnuff Fungus (Xylaria hypoxylon)

It looks like the snuffed out wick of a candle and grows on deciduous dead wood.

Another fingerlike fungus is growing out of a dead tree by Loch Imrich.

This is Yellow Stagshorn (Calocera viscosa) which is really common on dead wood, but on conifers this time.

NPMS and toadstools - large and tiny

 In a post a couple of years ago I mentioned that I survey plots for a scheme called  the NPMS (the National Plant Monitoring Scheme).  You can read more about it on their website here. Ideally, the plots are surveyed every year, twice a year, and I have endeavoured to do that for the 8 years  since the scheme started.  There are 1,207 squares being monitored and  I was rather surprised to find that of the hundreds of volunteer surveyors only 40 have manged to send in data every year.  As I was one of them, I even got a mention in the 2022 Annual Report.  Probably the only bit of botanical fame I will ever have!

On my visit to my plot up on Craggan (a local hill) there were a few fungi that caught my eye.  I don't have names for them but could admire them, none the less.  The first was a tiny toadstool with frilly points:

The others that caught my eye were much bigger and more colourful.  The first one was  about 4 cm across and has really wide gills.  Maybe a waxcap?

The second group were much bigger. That's my boot for scale.

 Most of the fungi we notice have those big fruiting bodies we call mushrooms or toadstools.  The majority of the fungus is underground in a web called the mycelium.  The fruiting bodies are produced  to manufacture and distribute their spores.

In the last photo you can see there is a rock with white patches.  Those white patches are lichens.  It might surprise you to know that they are also fungi.  Lichens are fungi which also have another organism inside, usually an alga.  Lichens often have different fruiting bodies called apothecia which look like little jam tarts or wine gums growing on the lichen and have the job of manufacturing spores. However, there are some lichens which actually grow tiny toadstools and I spotted one on a rock on my way home.

This interesting lichen is only about 5cm across and looks like a green crust with some pinkish blobs.  It gets more interesting as you get closer and look at those pink blobs.

The pink blobs are the heads of teeny tiny mushrooms just a few millimetres tall!  They also have the job of producing spores. Once you have your eye in, this lichen (Baeomyces rufus) is quite common locally in shady dampish woodland.

Finally, from rather pleasing facets of nature, to a not so pleasant one from my garden.  You may have read in previous posts that I have the misfortune to have New Zealand Flatworms in my garden and I wage a constant war of attrition against them as they eat earthworms almost to the point of  extinction.  I shifted a pile of fencing planks and found plenty of NZ flatworms underneath and dozens of their eggs, which look like shiny blackcurrants.  Each egg has several baby worms inside.  One had just been laid and I think the white patch on the flatworm must be its egg laying opening as I have not seen this before (and believe me, I have seen hundreds of flatworms!).

A NZ flatworm and a fresh egg

Loch Vaa and Lochain Uvie

Last week I joined some other keen botanists and went to Loch Vaa to look for some specific plants that are not found much locally. Ian Green, who is the BSBI recorder for vice-county 95 (Moray) led the walk as he knew what we were looking for, whereas the rest of us had not even heard of the plants!

Loch Vaa  is North of Aviemore and is just behind Laggantygown Cemetery so there is convenient car parking. It was a stunningly sunny day and the loch was quite low, exposing a stony shore.

Loch Vaa

The water was crystal clear and there were shoals of small fishes.

   There were two plants that we were looking for, both related to a more common species.  The first was a hybrid Spearwort.  Lesser Spearwort (Ranunculus flammula) has a flower like a buttercup but grows in damp or wet areas and has thin leaves.

Lesser Spearwort with narrow leaves (the broad leaves belong to the pondweed)

The plant we were looking for was a hybrid - a cross between  Lesser Spearwort and Creeping Spearwort with the unwieldy name of Ranunculus x levenensis.  But Creeping Spearwort  is an extremely rare plant and does not grow in Moray.  So how did the hybrid get here?  The best explanation is that it was brought in on the feet of visiting waterfowl.  As it roots readily from the stem, this would help it get established.  We found quite a few plants but it is maybe not the most impressive sight .

Hybrid Spearwort

In fact, most of the plants we concentrated on were rather small.  The next on the list was Small Water-pepper (Persicaria minor),  which prefers to grow in more southerly areas and Loch Vaa is the farthest North that it has been found.

Small Water-pepper

It is like Redshank (Persicaria maculosa) which is much bigger and sometimes has a black blotch on the leaves.  It is very common and I have seen it growing at the side of the pavement in Newtonmore Main Street.  I was quite surprised to find I don't have a photo of it!

 Another plant I had not seen before was Marsh Speedwell (Veronica scutellata).   This one had blue flowers but they can be pink or white.

Marsh Speedwell

Inspired by the trip, I thought I would visit Lochain Uvie (just at the base of Creag Dubh) to see if I could find the same plants, as when the loch is low, there is a stony bit of shore. 

Lochain Uvie looking West

Lochain Uvie with Creag Dubh in the background.

I did not find the two rarities as the stony bit was covered in grass.  But there were other compensations. In a dried out boggy area I found a lot of Great Sundew (Drosera anglica).  "Great " is a bit of an exaggeration as it is tiny!  It is an insectivorous plant and catches insects on its sticky hairs.  The leaves are longer and more spoonlike than its even smaller relative, Round-leaved Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia).

Great Sundew

It does have flowers but they were still in bud.

Another bog plant had finished flowering but its seeds were a bright, bright orange.

Bog Asphodel

And finally, there were plenty of grasshoppers pinging about when you walked through the grass. So a very pleasant trip even if I did not find the rarities.