Plants of Skye, Raasay & The Small Isles

Spoiler alert: Special Interest only!

I collected 11 specimens this year around VC 104 and sent them to David McCosh who says they are nearly all new 10km square records.

The most interesting was Hieracium ascendentidens  from near Colbert Point  for which David had only one previous record from VC 104.

Others were H. beebyanum, H. caledonicum, H. cerinthiforme, H. orimeles, H. rubicundiforme, H. strictiforme and 2 H. triviale (previously H. vulgatum).

Two could not be determined. One from the Druim na Ciche area is close to H. lagganense “but is ruled out by having obtuse rather than narrowly acute phyllaries.” A plant from Gedintailor “has some elements in common with H. uistense but not enough to be acceptable”.

We don’t usually see snow in October:

View from the garden

But the weeds are still flowering in the vegetable garden at sea level:

Veronica peregrina

Veronica persica

Ranunculus sceleratus

(All of these are rare locally.)

I have been away for a month and since my return the weather has not been great. And there is lots to do in the garden. During the low season I have a number of small projects that I intend to undertake but first, here is an interesting map:

This shows the number of taxa not re-found since before 2000 by tetrad in vice-county 104. The pink/brown colour indicates the worst cases. I really need to spend more recording time on Raasay next season. The reason that Raasay comes out so badly in this analysis is twofold. Firstly, it was extremely well recorded before 2000 and secondly, I have been concentrating on the rest of my patch in recent years.