Today I started at Caroy to see what Colin had found outside his garden. It turned out to be Allium paradoxum (Few-flowered Garlic), new to the vice-county and presumably escaped from his garden more than ten years ago before he took ownership.

Allium paradoxum – mixture of bulbils and flowers +triangular stem
Then I went to acquire a specimen of Utricularia stygia (Nordic Bladderwort) for tomorrow’s meeting. This makes the earliest record ever in VC104 for any Utricularia and in fairness if I had not known exactly where to look I would never have spotted it at this nascent stage.
At Dunvegan I checked a couple of things from the Skye Nature Group excursion there. The Erophila by the church was the same as the one up the hill, E. verna s.s. What we thought likely to be Lonicera nitida (Wilson’s Honeysuckle) looks all the more likely now it is near flowering with flower buds in pairs in the leaf axils:

Lonicera nitida
A visit to the Sawmill Burn allowed me to re-find Arctostaphylos uva-ursi (Bearberry), the first record for NG24 since 1993. I walked a long way up the burn and back again before spotting it just by the road – but made other worthwhile records during my travels.
Finally I went to Romesdal Mill

Romesdal Mill
principally to re-find Arabidopsis thaliana (Thale Cress) which hadn’t been recorded in NG45 for 23 years and not at that site since 1971. These things do tend to still be there through the decades.

Arabidopsis thaliana
There were also quite a few of these polymorphic bumblebee mimics, Eristalis intricaria on Caltha palustris (Marsh-marigold) flowers:

Eristalis intricaria