Over The Sea From Skye

Yesterday I went to have  a look at Andrew Curie’s herbarium, currently being looked after by NTS at Balmacara. There are a lot of fully curated sheets from all over Scotland and the rest of Europe:

Soidago virgaurea sheet

(With apologies for picture quality – I didn’t have my camera handy and took this with the webcam on my laptop.)

There is also three-quarters of a herbarium cabinet that contains uncurated specimens. The curated sheets just need to be catalogued, the remainder either need to be mounted, labelled and catalogued or discarded. I fear many will have to be discarded as they do not appear to have full details of where and when collected. Anyone want a job?

After that I had a walk around Loch Iain Oig and Loch Palascaig in order to look for some species that had not been seen in NG72 within VC105 for a long time. It is a long way from Poolewe for Duncan to come so I have offered to do a small amount of recording over there.

I succeeded with Isoetes lacustris, Juncus articulatus, Juncus bulbosus, Juncus conglomeratus, Littorella uniflora and Myriophyllum alterniflorum all last recorded in 1989.

It turns out that I also made first ever VC105 NG72 records for Epilobium brunnescens, Festuca vivipara, Juncus squarrosus, J. tenuis, Pinus contorta, Saxifraga × urbium, Stachys sylvatica, Tropaeolum majus, Vaccinium vitis-idaea, Veronica officinalis & Viola palustris. Just shows how much there is to do there – it is November and I only recorded 82 taxa.

I was amused to find Tropaeolum majus (Nasturtium) again so soon after my first record for VC104. Duncan tells me that it was not known in VC105 until this year but that mine is the fifth record.

Tropaeolum majus in VC105

It was not the only garden throw-out around there.

Tags: Plants