My article for the April edition of the Raasay Community Newsletter (Am Bratach Ratharsair) concerns Lesser Celandine and can be found from a link on this page. Some images that didn’t make it to the newsletter:
Ficaria verna subsp fertilis on Raasay
Ficaria verna subsp. verna: Bulbils (Portree)
Ficaria verna subsp. verna: Leaf mines (Sleat)
Celandine Clustercup Rust Photo M. Macdonald
The East Scotland Branch of Butterfly Conservation has done an excellent job of publishing lists and images of moths by month by vice-county. So if you follow this link you will find the VC104 page and you can select a month. December and January are blank but e.g. March shows 11 moths of which 7 are “Likely”, 3 “Unlikely” and 1 “Very Unlikely”.
Obviously it needs to be used with care but it is a good place to start if you have a moth you are not sure of.
In fact this March in VC104 has seen lots of Pale Brindled Beauties, a Currant Pug and a March Moth (not listed for March in VC104) and at least two Red Swordgrass (listed as unlikely) so caveat emptor.
Out on the shore recently there have been lots of small yellow tori on the kelp. George Brown tells me that they are the egg circles of the beautiful snail Lacuna vincta (Banded Chink Shell) and sent me this image of parents and eggs (plus one Gibbula cineraria (Grey Top Shell)).
Lacuna vincta – adults and eggs Photo: G. Brown
Well, some signs of life anyway and we appear to be in for a week of good weather. In flower yesterday:
I also spotted Yellow Brain fungus on dead gorse
Tremella mesenterica (Yellow Brain)
(It is yellow initially, turning orange later.) However, there is also a lookalike, Tremella aurantia, that is virtually indistinguishable without a microscope. Liz Holden says that on gorse it is almost certainly T. mesenterica which parasitizes the fungus Peniophora, which is common on gorse. T. aurantia parasitises Stereum hirsutum which would be unusual on gorse and most records so far are from the south of the UK. It could well be in Scotland just not recorded yet. I will see if I can find the host fungus to double-check.
Last night I put out the moth trap for the first time this year and this morning there were three Pale Brindled Beauties on the wall beside it:
Pale Brindled Beauty
I also caught a greenbottle mimic a few days ago in the house, Eudasyphora cyanella, which over-winters as an adult.
Eudasyphora cyanella
In place of the previously advertised talk SWT Skye Region Group presents:
Terry Swainbank has been into the herbarium at the University of Oxford and compared what he had determined as Platanthera x hybrida (P. chlorantha x bifolia) from his croft with a specimen from Sligachan taken by George Claridge Druce in 1909.
This experience has confirmed his determination.
Hybrid Butterfly-orchid at Ard Dorch 2015 Photo: T Swainbank
Druce said of his plant: “….differing from bifolia by its longer spur and its pollen lobes being slightly divaricate; from virescens by its colour and shape of sepals and spurs – on the whole nearer bifolia.”
Druce specimen University of Oxford Herbarium
There is no record for the hybrid in the BSBI Distribution Database for VC104.Indeed, there are only four records from Scotland, the latest in 1995. Druce’s become the earliest and Terry’s the only one so far this century.
OK. Here come the crabs:
Green Shore Crab
Edible Crab
Velvet Crab
Spider Crab
Swimming Crab awaiting identification
Inspired by Wednesday’s excursion, on Thursday at low water I wandered out the door onto the beach and down to the exposed kelp forest here on Raasay.
I found five different crabs and five different echinoderms. Here are the echinoderms:
Bloody Henry Starfish
Common Starfish
Spiny Starfish
Common Brittlestar
Edible Sea Urchin
Andy has kindly let me use one of his pictures of Huperzia selago subsp. arctica from the Cairngorms:
Huperzia selago subsp. arctica Photo A. Amphlett
Near Sligachan ten days ago I found some Huperzia selago (Fir Clubmoss) that looked to me like subsp. arctica. I sent a specimen to Mike Wilcox who confirms it – unless it is H. haleakalae (Pacific Clubmoss) which seems less likely (not definitely recorded in the British Isles) but needs to be checked for.
Huperzia selago subsp. arctica is thin and yellow compared with subsp. selago, the common taxon. A key is here. It is known in the Outer Isles, one site in Orkney, East Inverness-shire and one site in Ireland.
Next time I shall take a photograph……
Plants of Skye, Raasay & The Small Isles 