The Naming of Names

It looks like there will be a major re-naming and re-ordering job to do on my flora when the new edition of Clive Stace’s New Flora of the British Isles comes out in a month or two.  He has followed the APG III approach, which I heartily endorse, but as well as the upheavals in various families notably Scrophulariaceae and Lilliaceae there are smaller changes such as Ranunculus ficaria being moved to the genus Ficaria.

A walk on Skye in June

Early warning:  I shall be leading a walk for the Skye and Lochalsh branch of SWT from Duntulm to Rubha Hunish on Saturday 12th June 2010.  I hope to look at Loch Cleat which has some interesting records, the castle area and sea cliffs followed by a walk out to Rubha Hunish. This is the northernmost point of Skye.

The Flora and the H2 2009 Report

I have produced a listing of plants in taxonomic order for the Flora of Raasay and Rona. There are also two short links available to the flora: http://tinyurl.com/Raasayflora and http://bit.ly/Raasay. The number of unique visitors now stands at 633. 

A report on the second half of 2009 is now on my home page but there is little new in it for avid followers of this blog.  Quite a few visitors have been to this blog even though I haven’t added anything for nearly two months.  I hope you have found useful things.

Tetrads

I use Succisa pratensis (Devil’s-bit Scabious) as a marker to show which tetrads have been recorded:

The black dots show tetrads (2 x 2 km squares) with records from 2000 to 2009; red dots are earlier records that can be localised to this scale. 

The pinkish squares are 10 km squares where the plant has been recorded post-1999 – all 10km squares in the vice-county. (For less common species, 10km squares with earlier records but no post-1999 record are shown in a different colour.)

This shows that the Small Isles and the islands to the east of Skye have been pretty well covered in recent times. 

What is also apparent is just how much there remains to cover on Skye.  It would be nice to have visited most tetrads by the end of 2019 but we shall see…..

There will be a pause

I shall probably not add anything to this blog until the New Year.  Season’s Greetings!

Threatened Plants for 2010

I had forgotten that these had already been published in BSBI News of September 2009.  The ones of local relevance are:

Chrysanthemum (Glebionis) segetum (Corn Marigold)

Polystichum lonchitis (Holly Fern)

Sibbaldia procumbens (Sibbaldia)

The first is largely restricted these days to introductions of various sorts – imported soil for roadworks or planting of wild flower seed mixes – except on Muck where it is abundant in arable fields.

The second is local but with well-known sites.

The third is also local but with some of the sites poorly defined and this is the one that is likely to take most effort.

Catch-up time

There has been a lone whooper swan on the sea in front of the house for two weeks now.  I am beginning to think it will stay for the winter though I had hoped it would find others of its kind.   Last year there was a lone one for about a week.  I counted 13 red-throated divers on the sea too recently.  I am used to seeing them in pairs (plus young when present) on lochans.

My friend Calum who has taken me to Rona so often in recent years has sold his boat this summer which means an end to easy trips to Rona. I can get to Scalpay in my own little boat and maybe if done in two stages I could get to Rona and stay in the bothy.

Over the winter I shall add another page to my Flora of Raasay and Rona listing plants in taxonomic order and linking each to its main entry.  Unique visitors since I started the counter now stand at 475.

I have sent away my records for the Threatened Plants Project.  I expect to be told the identity of the 2010 target species at the Scottish Annual Meeting of BSBI in Perth tomorrow,

The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh is running a Certificate in Practical Field Botany course on Eigg next year and I have promised help with provision of known records – in return for which I hope to gain some new ones!  On a recce for the course in September, Heather McHaffie spotted some proliferative Cynosurus cristatus (Crested Dog’s-tail):

Proliferative Cynosurus on Eigg Photo: H McHaffie

According to the new BSBI Grasses Handbook such specimens are “common late in the season”.

I think I have found the source of my wood-boring beetle – an old desk once in Raasay Primary School used in more recent years as a saw-bench.  It has been burned!

The Garage Beetle

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.

Insect News

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.

That Poa from the Trotternish Ridge

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.