I'm still terribly behind on the blogging. Today is catch up day, seeing as the snow is steadily falling outside.
I stuck local during the first half of March, not leaving the northern part of Skye. The second half of the month saw me wander slightly further afield onto Raasay and then onto the Scottish mainland where I had a fantastic day in the Inverness area. This post will summarise the local stuff.
March 1st was a glorious sunny day, if a tad chilly, and I took myself off towards Dunvegan in the west. First stop was a large quarry which nowadays is used as a dumping ground. I saw my shadow for the first time on Skye this year and took a pic to commemorate the moment
Yes dear reader, I am in fact a tiny-headed, ten foot tall amputee...
Dunvegan Quarry, or the washing machine graveyard as I like to call it
As you can see, the quarry is a little damp underfoot at this time of year, but the raised areas hold some interesting plants and I year-ticked White-stemmed Bramble Rubus cockburnianus in all of its glory.
Rubus cockburnianus. It looks (slightly) better in the summertime
I couldn't find much else of interest in the quarry, but give it a couple of months and it will be much more productive. I had a little explore of the lanes north of Dunvegan Castle and stumbled across a roadside verge which held twenty eight clumps of Pendulous Sedge Carex pendula.
As the map shows, Pendulous Sedge is an uncommon plant on Skye, in fact I'd never seen it in the five years I've lived here until I found this patch. Annoyingly, I must have driven past them at least a dozen times in the last few years.
Londonpride Saxifraga x urbium growing on a mossy bank near Dunvegan
The following week I headed down to Portree Woods in search of who-knows-what behind the houses at Budhmor. I've previously found Common Mock-orange Philadelphus coronarius growing by the river banks and there's a mature Japanese Red-cedar of unknown provenance not too far away. It would be very useful to know the history of this woodland, is it natural or was it planted? Are the exotics planted, are they naturalised from garden throw-out material or are they birdsown? I spent a while trying to refind the Spring Crocus that Stephen Bungard found here a couple of years back, no luck on that front but I did find a fairly substantial conifer that defied keying through using Stace 4. I took some pics, bagged a sprig for later determination and moved on.
Note the bark hanging in strips
Not one of the usual suspects
Back indoors I keyed this sprig to Hinoki Cypress Chamaecyparis obtusa, which seemed unlikely at best. It's not in Stace 4, which would explain why I couldn't ID it in the field. I sent the images to Stephen Bungard, who asked me to send him the specimen. He also keyed it to Hinoki Cypress and forwarded it to Matt Parratt, the BSBI Referee for conifers. Happily for us, Matt confirmed it as C.obtusa and a new plant for Skye. Of course, the lingering question remains - is it wild or was it planted? I'll probably never get to the bottom of that, but I do plan to undertake a bit of investigation into the history of the woodland here.
A wander further upstream turned up some nice plants, lots of Ramsons were emerging and Opposite-leaved Golden-saxifrage flowers were starting to open up. I also found a single Flowering Curant looking resplendent in the sunshine.
Ramsons Allium ursinum - one of my very favourite plants
Opposite-leaved Golden-saxifrage Chrysosplenium oppositifolium being visited by a springtail
Bluebells are starting to come up, along with the Bluebell-specific rust Uromyces muscari
A couple of hours later I was back near the houses and had a quick look for further alien species. I soon found this
Wood Dock Rumex sanguineus var sanguineus - new to Skye
There are only two other Scottish records north of Edinburgh for this plant. It's undoubtedly originated from garden plants that have been illegally fly-tipped into the woodland, but is seemingly doing well for itself now. The red vein colouration gives it the somewhat dramatic-sounding common name of Blood-veined Dock. Realising this would be new to VC, I sent a few images to Stephen Bungard who queried whether it could be Chard. I reckoned not, since the veins curved back and were all wrong for that. He came back with "anastomosing!" and a link to what the word meant in botanical terms. I knew there'd be a clever word for it...
The rest of the week was taken up with work, though a strong aurora helped brighten up a dull week. My camera doesn't have an option for long exposure (or if it does I don't know about it) so these images are a very poor representation of the marvel that was happening overhead just before midnight on 13th.
Ordinarily the aurora up here is a bit, dare I say it, a bit...naff. Hazy white shimmers skittering across the sky is about as good as it usually gets. Or maybe I just miss all the good ones. But this one dominated the northern horizon and the green colour was pretty intense. I've never seen the rising green columns before, you can see that I've fluked capturing the start of one in the bottom image. Definitely my best aurora yet, I watched it for maybe twenty minutes until the clouds rolled in and spoiled the fun. I'll have to play around with my camera settings for next time, these pics really don't do it justice at all.
On the 14th I daytripped across to Raasay, where I met up with Stephen Bungard. Our mission was to sample the polypody populations in one particular area in order to determine whether Polypodium interjectum was present. Most of our samples were Polypodium vulgare but we did successfally find Polypodium interjectum, new to the area. We also found a few other bits n bobs, including lots of Green Spleenwort, a plant I only saw for the first time last month!
Green Spleenwort Asplenium viride - and lots of it too!
Wilson's Filmy-fern Hymenophyllum wilsonii - curiously difficult to focus on (that's my excuse...)
Yellow Saxifrage Saxifraga aizoides found growing on a cliff ledge
Other highlights included the first Goldenrod, Common Valerian, Hay-scented Buckler-fern, Hairy Rock-cress and Red Fescue of the year (I'd already seen lots of what I've suspected to be Red Fescue earlier this year, but Stephen confirmed the stuff we found growing on rocky ledges was it). I also learned that there's a thing called Mossy Sandwort Arenaria balearica growing along the village walls and Slender-leaved Pondweed Potamogeton filiformis growing in a lochan in the centre of Raasay. Looks as though I'll be back at least a couple more times this year.
My yearlist at the end of the day stood at a very healthy 529 species out of the hoped for 1000.
I've only heard three or four tracks by Aurora, mostly not really my kind of thing - but she has a truly mesmerising way of pulling you into her world through the magic of her voice. Her mind is hardwired a little differently from most, perhaps, but the results are startlingly genuine and pure. Just watch her body language as she immerses herself into this story for us, both enchanting and frightening at the same time. Hope you enjoy!
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