Plants of Skye, Raasay & The Small Isles

The track between Kinloch and Kylerhea is like the curate’s egg – good in parts – especially at this time of year with the bracken at its peak. Close to the middle is Meall Port and until yesterday the tetrads there were virtually unrecorded: NG71N (84% land) had two plants recorded and NG71M (1% land) nil.

The track from Kinloch into NG71N is mostly pretty good and took me through other tetrads that benefited from more effort, notably a corner of NG71I which had only 25 taxa recorded.

So, 0, 2 and 25 have been improved to 101, 122 and 100 and I also added 50 to NG71H and 8 to NG71C.

Highlights included Rubus saxatilis (Stone Bramble) and Stachys sylvatica (Hedge Woundwort) which are common species (present in >200 tetrads in VC104) that had not been recorded in the 10km square NG71 since before 2000.  There are still six taxa in this category including three Equisetum spp. – and certainly I never saw a single horsetail yesterday.

Both the coastal tetrads M and N had Osmunda regalis (Royal Fern) where a burn enters the sea – the only previous record for NG71 was undated (1971-1986 ) and unlocalised.

Osmunda regalis

Also Lycopus europaeus (Gypsywort):

Lycopus europaeus

plus Carex otrubae (False Fox-sedge) and Senecio sylvaticus (Heath Groundsel) and several sites for Hymenophyllum wilsonii (Wilson’s Filmy-fern) and Carex laevigata (Smooth-stalked Sedge).

Things in flower, Dactylorhiza maculata (Heath Spotted-orchid) and Hyacinthoides non-scripta (Bluebell) (!):

There were spangle galls on Quercus robur (Pedunculate Oak) caused by the cynipid wasp Neuroterus quercusbaccarum.

Spangle Galls

and this bee-mimic, the hoverfly Eristalis pertinax, which is apparently common – but as for many insects there are limited Skye records on the NBN Atlas – and none in NG71.

Eristalis pertinax

On Friday I took the boat from Elgol and had six hours at Loch Coruisk. The scenery was, of course, dramatic, but the plants largely confirmed the view that mountains that are good for mountaineers are not great for botanists.  Mind you, I did no climbing and there were a few things of note such as Salix x ambigua (S. aurita x repens) which is known elsewhere near burns in NG42 but not in the south end where these were.

I also spotted four plants in NG41 that had not been recorded since before 2000 and two in NG42, though one of these was a tiny sapling of Viburnum opulus (Guelder-rose) which looks unlikely to survive the winter.

Some of the pools had these features in them which I imagine, perhaps rather fancifully, are caused by erupting gas from rotting vegetation:

The only rich area was near the Coruisk Memorial Hut where there were some relatively interesting cliffs and rocks, freshwater marsh and salt marsh. Here in tetrad NG41Z I found 127 species including some I hadn’t been expecting like Galeopsis tetrahit s.s. (Common Hemp-nettle) and Odontites vernus (Red Bartsia).

There was lots of Rosa spinosissima (Burnet Rose) growing in some of the freshwater beaches of Loch Coruisk and some actually in the river at its current level.

Rosa spinosissima in Coruisk River

Some had this gall on it, caused by the gall wasp Diplolepis spinosissimae:

D. spinosissimae galls

I found this a couple of years ago at Talisker Bay but there remain very few records on the NBN Gateway.

I also spotted these leaf mines on Lonicera periclymenum (Honeysuckle). The miners are yet to be definitively identified. Later: Murdo and I have agreed it is larvae of the Dipteran fly Chromatomyia aprilina based on the long streaks of frass. See British Leafminers page.

With the Skye Botany Group excursion tomorrow but the car already at Sconser, today was an opportunity for a gentle stroll so I visited two tetrads north of Romesdal (between Kensaleyre and Earlish).

I didn’t stray that far from the road apart from a wander up the Lòn Ruadh, but ended up with between 140 and 150 vascular plant taxa in each tetrad – previous records had been a bit thin at 88 and definitely thin at 43 taxa.

On the butterfly front, I saw my first Small Heath of the year plus several Green-veined Whites- they have been around recently.

This rust was on Ribes sanguineum (Flowering Currant), which I am reasonably confident is caused by Puccinia caricina.

The plant highlight was another, in this case previously unrecorded, large colony of Equisetum pratense (Shady Horsetail) on the verge of the road along Glen Hinnisdal.

On the way home I paused briefly at Sligachan and managed to find Arabidopsis thaliana (Thale Cress), the only previous record in NG42 also being from Sligachan, though not in the same spot, in 1979.