Two weeks have slipped by since I wrote anything here, but I have not been entirely idle. Nor have my botanical comrades.
On the plant front, Joanna has added Vicia sativa subsp. segetalis (Common Vetch) to the vice-county flora with some plants at Kyleakin.
Seth has been checking up on the Carex rupestris (Rock Sedge) and Potentilla crantzii (Alpine Cinquefoil) at the only vice-county sites at Suardal.
I made several visits to a croft on Raasay at the crofters’ request as they intend to remove grazing and increase the native woodland, removing a small Sitka Spruce plantation at the same time. I will return for a late-season survey, but so far have found nearly 200 vascular plants on the croft. As a relic of past cultivation Tolmiea menziesii (Pick-a-back-plant) is a first for Raasay.
Neil and I explored some lochans near the Storr. I had hoped to re-find a 1989 record of Utricularia minor (Lesser Bladderwort), the only record for it in the 10 km square NG55. I don’t know what it was like in 1989, but the pool at the given grid reference is no longer suitable habitat. Pretty much the only vascular plant present is a mass of Glyceria fluitans (Floating Sweet-grass). Next time I am on Fladday, which is in the same 10 km square and has more suitable habitat, I shall see if I can find it there – though I never have in numerous visits.
However, we had a good day visiting a couple of other lochans that I had never been to, in the process adding 25 taxa to the tetrad (2 x 2 km square of the British National Grid) NG45W, plus a few not recorded there since 1973.
In the adjacent tetrad NG55B, we found Lotus pedunculatus (Greater Bird’s-foot-trefoil) on the roadside, the first record for NG55 and Epilobium alsinifolium (Chickweed Willowherb), a plant that is quite frequent along the Trotternish Ridge and beside the burns that run from it, but not recorded in this tetrad since 1957.
Tags: Plants
Plants of Skye, Raasay & The Small Isles 
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