A small group of us were taken to Canna by boat from Skye last week. Paul, our skipper, kindly gave of his time and requested only a donation towards RNLI. We had an excellent cruise in a very calm sea and saw porpoises and bottle-nosed dolphins. Seabird numbers seemed down, no doubt partly the result of avian flu, though we had good numbers of Manx Shearwaters and gannets. Guillemots were a bit few and far between and we only saw one pair of Great Skuas.
We spent most of our time on Sanday and plant-wise things were much as expected. The Mertensia was doing well
and the small dune system was full of the expected plants, albeit desiccated after the recent drought. The shoreline marshes had Bolboschoenus maritimus (Sea Club-rush), Ranunculus sceleratus (Celery-leaved Buttercup), Lycopus europaeus (Gypsywort) and so on. I am afraid I wasn’t very active with the camera. The Beta vulgaris subsp. maritima (Sea Beet) was down to two plants and the Helosciadium inundatum (Lesser Marshwort) was not to be found at An t-Oban. I have tried repeatedly for this, recorded in 1984, but the loch has become very overgrown and it may well have gone. In any event, it is now very difficult to re-find.
Nick added Cystopteris fragilis (Brittle Bladder-fern) to the Canna/Sanday list and I spotted Digitalis purpurea (Foxglove), the first Canna/Sanday record since 1994!
Canna is a great place to visit and now has its own microbrewery. What’s not to like?
Plants of Skye, Raasay & The Small Isles 
July 19, 2023 at 10:35 am |
[…] our way back from Canna, I spotted a tree on the cliffs near Glasnakille on Skye. I was pretty sure that it was the […]