It's Orchid Time

It’s orchid time down on Newtonmore Golf Course and I took advantage of a few warm days to have two leisurely walks through the golf course and along the Wildcat trail. I managed to find all five kinds of orchids but have not yet gone looking for the Frog Orchids which are much harder to find.

Orchids, left to right: Fragrant, Northern Marsh, Greater Butterfly and Heath Spotted

The distribution of orchids was a bit different this year. There are several Greater Butterfly-orchids on the top golf course quite near the extensive sewage pipe works which has completely destroyed the grassland alongside the track. Luckily the golf course rough on the other side of the track seems to be flourishing.

 There are plenty of orchids on the lower golf course in the rough especially alongside number 16 fairway where I was astonished to find 52 small white orchids which is the most I’ve ever seen and they are spread widely. Small white is quite a scarce orchid. If you are looking for it – it’s small and white! It is quite easy to confuse with Alpine Bistort (Persicaria vivipara) from a distance. Alpine Bistort has small flowers at the top but little bulbils lower down so that it can either reproduce from seed if the flowers get pollinated or vegetatively as the little bulbils will grow into new plants when they fall.

\Left:Alpine  Bistort, Right: Small-white orchid 

There were plenty of insects to do the pollinating. The heads of the Hogweed were covered with little flies:

and the Melancholy Thistle had attracted the bees which were completely covered in pollen.

I also found a weird -looking fly lying in the grass beneath a Birch tree. It seemed rather groggy and allowed me to take pictures of it without flying away. It was about 2 cm across and had a distinctive yellow bar across the top of its abdomen and had yellow antennae and legs as well.

 

 It was easily identified by Google lens as a Birch Sawfly (Cimbex femoratus). They spend most of their life as larvae and only last eight days as flies so I suspect this one was on its eighth day! You do have to be careful with Google lens and checkout its suggestions but it can be helpful to know where to start. 

Bees and lookalikes

 At the moment, the garden is buzzing with bees. Especially bumblebees. These can be identified from the stripes on their body and the colour of the end of their abdomen. There is a good guide to the common species here

 

Of course, it is not that easy when they are flying around but I often find dead ones either in the sun room or just on the ground which makes it a bit easier to look closely. It is also confused by there being different sizes, with the Queen who is larger being seen first and then smaller male bees of similar patterns. Here are some of the ones I have found in the last week.

2 cuckoo bees and a white-tailed bumble bee

Important note: On submitting this photo to an insect expert, I find I am not very good at identifying bees! So take any species names as guesses...

On the right of the photo is a white-tailed bumblebee which is pretty common in my garden. The two bees to the left are cuckoo bees. They do not bother to make their own nest but lay their eggs in the nest of another bumblebee which then raises the cuckoo grubs as if they were its own. Each type usually resembles the bumblebee that it takes advantage of and looks pretty similar to it. They never have pollen baskets on their legs because they have no young to feed, and they are usually not as hairy as normal bumblebees.

A Drone-fly

The next insect in the photo above looks as though it could be a bee but in fact it is a hoverfly.

I have no idea what the advantage is for this fly to look like a honeybee.

Apologies for the poor photograph, as this seemed to be the only one I have of the orange tip butterfly. This one was taken at Nethy Bridge this weekend. I have seen lots of orange tip butterflies in my garden, and if you can see the orange tips they are male. The females lay their eggs on Honesty, of which I have lots in my garden, and I was about to pull the plants up before they self seed but now I will leave them and see if any little orange caterpillars appear. 

Single or Double

 All of a sudden, the garden has burst into bloom with the recent warm weather. It has been somewhat frustrating that I am unable to do much gardening as I have a broken arm, but in compensation there is no need to feel guilty for sitting on the bench watching the pond in the sunshine.

Single Marsh Marigold

At the moment the marsh marigolds are blooming. There are two varieties in the pond, one is the wild single flowered sort, and the other has "double" flowers though in fact each flower has many rows of petals. This will be a cultivated variety rather than a natural one. In fact, I prefer the single flowers, both for appearance and the fact that they are far more accessible to insect life. All those extra petals look pretty but they make it difficult, or even impossible, for the insects to get at the pollen or nectar.

Double flowered Marsh Marigold

One of the other flowers around the pond, spring sweet pea, (Lathyrus verna) had an interesting visitor. It was a bee I had not seen before but was very distinctive being covered in orange hairs. It was a Tawny Mining Bee. No it's not! see below:

Update:  An insect expert tells me it is  Bombus pascuorum, the Common Carder Bee.

 (Tawny Mining Bee: These are solitary bees which make a nest in soil and feed their young on pollen. Apparently their nests look like little volcanoes of soil with a hole in the top but I have not yet managed to see where it is nesting.)

The Bogbean flowers in the pond have just started to open, and if you look carefully a fly has already decided to visit.

If you are choosing flowers for your garden, consider buying the single flowered varieties and you will be doing the local insects a favour. And they will return the favour by visiting your garden. 

Arran and Arms

Partway through April, my husband and I joined a group from the British lichen society on Arran for a few days of lichen hunting. Although my husband is quite happy for me to go lichen hunting, he spent his time cycling. The weather was rather unpredictable resulting in our ferry from Ardrossan being cancelled with an hour’s notice and deferred for two days to 7 o’clock in the morning. After the initial panic, we managed to drive to Troon and get an alternative ferry, with a sigh of relief. We were very fortunate has the ferry after that was cancelled as well, and some people had to wait until the following day to get over.

 

As most of you will know, Arran is an island on the West Coast of Scotland. Although small, it has a range of interesting habitats from a mountain, Goat Fell, to plenty of coastline and Glens. Each habitat has a different selection of lichens, and I particularly enjoyed the coastal visit to Kildonan which included dinosaur footprints in the rock. 

I am not familiar with coastal lichens as Newtonmore is a long way from the sea but there was a big expanse of Dermatocarpon miniatum on the boulders where water ran down. I don't know why it is called miniatum as the lobes weren't mini at all, being over an inch across. There was another species of Dermatocarpon in my last post which again was in a place where water ran down the rocks.

 

Another visit was to an old graveyard. Graveyards are very popular with lichenologists because the gravestones are made of different rocks and lichens have their own preferences for the acidity or alkalinity of the rock they grow on. This means that you get a good range of species in a small area.

Noses to the gravestone!

 On returning to Newtonmore, I went for a walk along the Spey to advise on where they might put wildflower information boards. It is bit early for flowers on the Wildcat trail down by the Spey but there were some interesting fungi.

A morel

One was a morel with a contorted top and the other was a  puzzle until I got home and could look it up.

Moon Poop

 Apologies for the awful picture but there were two large hand size white blobs on an old Alder tree. On touching one, it had a skin but was squishy inside. A bit like custard that had set in the jug.  Research revealed that it was not a fungus but a slime mould, Reticularia lycoperdon or False Puffball or even better, Moon Poop! I had plans to go back and take pictures when it had developed more and produced spores but as you will find out in a moment this was not to be.

 The next day I went to a meeting in Strathpeffer of the HBRG, the Highland biological recording group and heard some interesting talks about beetles. There was a speaker called Ashleigh Whiffin who is a curator of the insect collection at the National Museums of Scotland. Ash loves her carrion beetles and gave a really interesting talk. She has a YouTube video available here. Carrion beetles bury little corpses and use them to feed their young.  After the meeting I went to do some shopping in Inverness and had a bit of a disaster when I tripped on an uneven paver in the car park and broke my arm. I am attempting to dictate this blog post but hope I will be able to type again in a few weeks.

Extreme lichening

 Over Easter I was lucky to have some of my family staying and we went for a walk to the Falls of Truim.   The Truim  runs through a gorge and has plenty of places to swim but we were on a lichen hunt rather than braving the chilly waters.

We had been swimming last year when it was a lot warmer. I had found some interesting lichens and had been asked to collect some samples next time I went there. I probably won't be visiting the site very often as the access is quite steep and I was glad of company (and the rope) to lend a hand!

The path alongside the gorge had  green areas alongside the pine roots - here it is with a size 9 shoe for scale:

You really need to get down close and peer at them before the green patches get interesting.

There are lots of pink blobs (apothecia) which have earned this lichen the nick name of "Fairy puke" Maybe some of you remember the Billy Connolly joke about carrots.... For those of you with a tender constitution it is officially known as Icmadophila ericetorum.

This wasn't the lichen I was looking for, though it was good to see it. The one I wanted was down by the edge of the river as it likes a bit of wet.

The ruler is in centimetres. The rock face is flushed with water from the slope above, and that is just the sort of habitat that this lichen (Dermatocarpon intestiniforme) likes. It goes a sludgy green when wet which distinguishes it from an almost identical lichen called Dermatocarpon luridum  which goes bright green - but I have yet to find that one. 

Once we were back at the top we went for a gentle walk in the woods and my daughter-in-law spotted a tiny interesting fungus. It is called Earpick fungus and the stalk is on one side of the cap (rather than the middle) and the whole thing is covered with bristles and grows on pine cones.

Earpick fungus (Auriscalpium vulgare)

Even the underneath of the cap is covered in tiny teeth. I assume the spores get shot out of those black tips.

When I looked at it under the microscope I found we had brought a tiny fly back as well, only about 2mm long. Stephen Moran kindly checked some photos and identified it as Trioza urticae, which is a Psillid (jumping plant louse).  Maybe not the most attractive of descriptions!

The mystery fly on the edge of the earpick fungus

Here's what Stephen said:

They overwinter away from the hosts, usually in conifers (they love Sitka spruce) and are now just venturing out and about again. They often pop up on house or car windows this time of year. 

On the way back we went past a pile of stones at the edge of a field - just look at all those lovely lichens.  I won't be able to resist going back for a closer look!

The lichenologists equivalent of a sweetie shop!

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Teabags and Halophytes

 More on the mystery parcel... it is part of a research project  to investigate halophytes.  Halophytes are plants that can cope with salt so they can grow by the sea or increasingly they have spread to the sides of salted roads.  Some have reached Newtonmore which is 45 miles from the coast, presumably from seeds in car tyres and carried on the wind. Here are the details of the current project:

I will be collecting some of the plants in Newtonmore and further afield if I see them.  If you want to help out, I'm sure Christopher would be pleased to hear from you (email above).  The plants are only just appearing so it is not too late to volunteer.  The parcel he sends you contains the materials for collecting, drying and logging your plant samples.

Another plant that is spreading, probably in car tyre treads is  Mossy Stonecrop (Crassula tilleaea).  It used to classed as scarce, and was missing from much of Britain as shown in the map below.

It appeared in North East Scotland and is making its way inland.  I found it in 2019 in the car park at the Folk Museum in Newtonmore.

Mossy Stonecrop (the red plants)

It is a succulent with fleshy leaves, and can grow from broken off parts.  Given that it is in the car park, it almost certainly arrived in a tyre tread.  It is easy to spot as although it is tiny, it is bright red so if you see it locally, let me know.

Some interesting arrivals!

Frog spawn has appeared in my pond this week. The first batch  arrived on the night of Friday 15th March. Last year (2023) it was 20th March, and 6th April in 2022.  So this is the earliest I have seen it in my pond.

 The post has also brought some interesting arrivals.  One was a book called Mountain Flowers by Alan R Walker.

I am in the process of arranging for a second edition of Wildflower Walks around Newtonmore, and I contacted Alan as I refer to his book in the preface.  He then very kindly posted me a printed copy of his book, which has been completely revised for 2024.  The file of the book is freely available from Alan's website:

https://www.alanrwalker.com/mountain-flowers/

So go and visit and pick up your free copy!

You might wonder why a book on mountain flowers is relevant for Newtonmore... well, as Newtonmore is at 250m above sea level,  many of our flowers appear in Alan's book.  There is a page for each flower with a photo, a drawing, a distribution map and other useful information - more than you get in most flower books that don't have the room to go into each species in depth. Here's an example page.

So do go and visit Alan's website and get yourself a copy.  As a science writer by trade, Alan writes well and you will enjoy reading some of the other material on his site.

There was a reason for picking the page on Scurvygrass as it relates to the second parcel I received.  Here are the contents of the parcel:

Why on earth would someone from the University of Edinburgh send me:

• 5 plastic bags containing approximately 50g orange silica gel beads each
• 1 plastic bag containing:
• 15 empty paper tea bags
• 1 spare tea bag containing 15 paper clips
• 1 spare tea bag containing 15 small index cards
• Postage of £3.49 — enough to cover shipping the package back with second class small parcel service (please reuse the packaging if possible)
• 1 archival ink pen

(Who knew you could buy empty tea bags?) It is a science project about Danish Scurvy Grass and I will explain more in my next blog post.  If you are unsure what Danish Scurvy Grass looks like, check out this previous blog post  See you next time!