Plants of Skye, Raasay & The Small Isles

The beetle from my garage turns out to be Hylotrupes bajulus (House Longhorn Beetle) and is new to the Hebrides. Richard Moore says that it is found in dry seasoned coniferous timbers especially in attics of houses and packing cases; larvae can take from three to ten years (or more) to develop.

This is not all good news in that the larvae bore holes in wood rather like large woodworm.  However, I am reasonably confident that it will have emerged from wood I have been given to burn rather than from the garage timbers which are all treated timber and not that old.

I have been away for over two weeks – hence the gap in blog.

I may need to change the title of this blog at this rate…..

On Saturday there was a fine specimen of Uroceras gigas (Wood Wasp or Horntail) outside Raasay Village Hall.  I spotted one there earlier in the year too so maybe they came with the wood for the hall.  I am waiting for an image from my friend Kyle to check whether it was of the northern race with a black ovipositor sheath. 

A moth in our conservatory yesterday has been identified by Brian Neath as Autumn Green Carpet (Chloroclysta miata) which he says is  another useful record as the only Skye records on the database are from the Rothamsted site at Carbost between 1966 and 1981.

Autumn Green Carpet

However, a beetle I found in my garage a month or so ago which I gave to Raasay beetle expert Richard Moore has him flummoxed: “looks very interesting, at the moment I’ve no idea what it is!”  No doubt further work will sort it out.

I sent the Poa flexuosa specimen to Tom Cope at Kew who says that sadly it isn’t that species but Poa glauca – not uncommon on the hills of Skye.  Ah well.