What do Giants, Wings and Oysters all have in common?

I awoke to discover that the overnight rain had cleared through and, after demolishing a breakfast baguette and coffee from a superbly placed chuck wagon, I set about exploring the corners of Springkerse Industrial Estate, quietly nestled in the eastern outskirts of Stirling. I'd parked in an overgrown layby and noticed a track running through a small slither of woodland and into another road on the estate. I immediately set off to explore. New for year plants here were carpets of Field Forget-me-nots and quite a bit of Perforate St John's-wort, but my eye was quickly caught by a large plant with huge spiky leaves - what the heck was that then?

I admit to suffering a bit of a mind-fart moment at this point. I figured it looked like Bear's-breech but with more spiny leaves. And the stem was clearly bristly. This made it Spiny Bear's-breech Acanthus spinosus, agreed? Stace 4 thought so too, sweet. Ambling my way around the estate it was pretty obvious that it has naturalised very thoroughly in carparks, in roadside verges and across any areas of wasteland. What I didn't do was attempt to run a plant through a key. Very slack and a fine exhibition of poor botany skillz...

Young growth, a paler green than the more mature leaves

I eventually quit Stirling and sped off westwards into Ayrshire, but couldn't shake a niggling feeling that I was overlooking something regards the big-leaved plant. Surely an Acanthus would be more glossy than the leaves I'd seen? Unsure, I continued through the lowlands and it and it wasn't until I got home several days later that a helpful chap on the Scottish Botany FB Group put me right - my plant was young Giant Hogweed Heracleum mantegazzianum! Then another chap waded in telling me not to touch it, that I'd get caustic burns, I'd go blind and then probably burst into spectacular flames, assuming I hadn't already died of lung failure first. I deleted the post in the end, he was doing my head in. My only excuse for not sussing it straight away is that I've only ever seen it ten feet tall in full flower and usually along watercourses, and not for about ten years now anyway. That and the fact I'm an idiot.

Me touching Giant Hogweed (moments later my hand turned black, withered and fell off. Obvs...)

I slowly worked my way down towards Ayr. In my early teens I lived here with my grandpa and, though he died some years back now, I always take a wee drive down memory lane when I'm in the area. I did a slow drive around some backstreets, noting that most of the pubs have gone and new cul-de-sacs have sprung up everywhere at some point in the recent past. Taking the coast road southwards I eventually arrived at Benane Head with its Green-winged Orchid populations. I took a fruitess wander around some meadows and skirted a couple of hills with no sign of orchids, quit and tried another area. This time I looked up from the herb-rich grassland I was wandering and spied purple spikes in the middle of a sheep-grazed field - oh right! Quickly hopping the fence, I soon found myself kneeling next to my first ever Green-winged Orchids, and what smart little plants they are too

Green-winged Orchids Anacamptis morio - superb little things! 

I had a quick scoot around and counted forty eight spikes in an area of maybe fifty metres by about ten. Doubtless I missed lots, but I didn't fancy inadvertantly trampling on others that may not have developed spikes yet. Very happy to have finally connected with this orchid, I wandered back to the car where I found another spike in the recently strimmed roadside verge.

Early Hair-grass Aira praecox

A terrestrialised water-crowfoot....

Even the experts out there agree that once a water-crowfoot has become terrestrialised, you need to walk away and pretend you never saw it. They do weird things (experts and terrestrialised water-crowfoots both), submerged leaves may not develop (crows-foot only) and they're not exactly easy to identify when they're not doing weird things! The only species that's been previously recorded at this location is Ivy-leaved Water-crowfoot, which it does look good for, but I'll leave it as 'aquatic Ranunculus sp'. Hopefully I'll get another chance with a typical example at some point soon.

Ailsa Craig

As you can probably tell from the images, the weather was absolutely stunning. We could do with a few more days like this on Skye. I wandered my way further south and followed my nose to the pebble beach of Ballantrae. A sudden thought hit me, I had a site for Oysterplant from a pebbly beach somewhere around here. I could picture the aerial pic in my mind, a sharp bend in the road by a long lake at the top of the beach. I looked down the road to where it sharply bent around the corner. Wandering down I spied a long lake....holy shit! I recalled the Oysterplant grew somewhere level with the southern end of the lake, though up on the shingle obviously. I set off full of hope. Ten minutes later and

Oysterplant(lings) - how very bloody marvellous!

I've only ever encountered Oysterplant way up the east coast of Scotland, and it's a long walk along an arduous beach. So to stumble across the best part of ten individual plants a five minute walk from the road was both a massive relief (sore foot, remember!) and a very welcome jam indeed. It's also just a really special plant, there's nothing else out there like it. Pity I was here too early in the season to find it flowering, that would have been the icing on the cake. Then I turned around....

Full-sized Oysterplant in flower!

I had to cast my shadow across this plant, the glare off the pale cobbles was playing havoc with my camera, but it gives a better idea of the true colour of the bluish-coloured leaves. It's a really great plant, such a shame it's becoming rarer and rarer. It used to occur on Skye, but all known plants have now been lost. It could still be clinging on somewhere, I'd love to rediscover it on Skye. It will probably never happen, but I live in hope.

Plenty of other stuff was growing out there in the shingle. Considering this is a popular stretch of coastline and quite close to houses, I'm amazed the vegetated shingle has survived so well

From top to bottom we have Sea Campion, Sea Beet, Common Cornsalad (2 pics) and Sea Sandwort. The cornsalad was a bit of a cheat, what you're meant to do is check the mature seeds, whereas what I actually did was check the distribution and habitat maps. Common Cornsalad is known all along this stretch of coast and occurs on shingle, amongst other habitat types. The other cornsalads don't - simple!

At the top of the beach, where the cobbles end and sandy soil begins, I found another suite of plants. Best of the lot, from my perspective, was Sand Sedge. I refound this at a Skye site where it hasn't been seen since the 1970s, and I've seen in in Cornwall twice. But that's it, so to self-find and identify it at a further site was a nice little bonus for me. My pics are all crap though!

Sand Sedge Carex arenaria and a photogenic set of huts

I turned The Gibstermobile northwards and set off once more, very happy to have stumbled across the Oysterplant and just soaking up the incredible weather. I spied an awful lot of flowering Tuberous Comfrey lining whole stretches of roadside verge and finally found a spot to pull in and check them out properly

Tuberous Comfrey Symphytum tuberosum with nettles on a roadside verge

I took a sprig back to the car and keyed it through properly, just in case. A few miles further up the road I found another layby and another comfrey, which I also keyed through properly

As expected, this is Russian Comfrey Symphytum x uplandicum - a common plant even on Skye

Right next to it was a large stand of Greater Celandine, but with weird over-developed flowering parts. This is Chelidonium majus flore pleno, a garden cultivar that has presumably been dumped here at some point in the past.

I've seen flore pleno Snowdrops fairly frequently, and occasionally I'll see a shrub with flore pleno heads, Kerria japonica springs to mind, but I had no idea that Greater Celandine had ever been cultivated as a garden plant or that they came in a flore pleno form. Google assures me that they really do, so I guess that's what these are. I pulled off a leaf and copious orange latex quickly bubbled to the top, just to double-check. 

Water Horsetail Equisetum fluviatile is well and truly on my Ayrshire list

I didn't have gen for anything else down south, so took a long drive northwards, planning to spend the night at Logierait in the Pitlochry area. There were a fistful of plants in the Logierait area that I still needed for The Challenge and although I was pretty sure I still had a healthy lead over Ghostie and Dorset Pete, a few gimme species certainly wouldn't go amiss. 

At some point or another I wandered into a random patch of woodland, finding white-flowered Pink-purslane which confused me. I also found a couple of young buck Roe Deer messing around and managed a quick video grab of them. It's not exactly Attenborough worthy, but I thought I'd share it anyway

I later pulled into a layby somewhere along the A9 north of Perth, just for a break from driving. I gave it ten minutes trying to relax and then grew bored. A quick scan around was worthwhile with this tall grass grabbing my attention

Lots of nice obvious features on this grass

If I haven't royally messed up, which is a distinct possibility when it comes to me and grasses, this should be Soft-brome Bromus hordeaceus. That's what I made it anyway. Hairy Tare was another yeartick from the layby, not at all a common plant back on Skye but well distributed in Perthshire.
 

My final plant of the day was Motherwort, growing in exactly the same place as it was the first, second and third times I saw it. In fact, I've never seen it anywhere else! This is what it looks like after dark

Motherwort by night. Which sounds like the name of a Scandinavian folk band

Motherwort by night was plant species 619 for the year. I'm definitely exceeding my expectations and, as I would soon find out, it was only going to get better tomorrow.

Music time and I'm feeling like something a bit lively and loud. Motörhead were supposedly the loudest band out there, so they'll do just fine. Crank it up, make it worthwhile. Sing for us with that beautiful voice of yours, Lemmy. Hope you enjoy!