Fungus on Figwort

Scrophularia nodosa (Common Figwort) is common enough locally and grows in my garden as a weed. It does not spread too much and I am always happy to let a few specimens flourish. A while back I noticed that last year’s capsules had small black dots on them and a few days ago I took some images and sent them to Bruce who tells me it is Didymella commanipula. He says it supposed to common though he has never seen it. There are only two records on NBN and seven on FRDBI (Fungal Records Database of Britain & Ireland) with none from Scotland on either database. If it is common it appears to be massively under-recorded.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL Didymella commanipulaCAMERA

OLYMPUSDidymella commanipula DIGITAL CAMERA

Eyre

It being the time for equinoctal tides, I went to Eyre here on Raasay for another attempt to find the source of Zostera marina (Eelgrass) that washes up there. As last year, I failed. I am beginning to think the pieces washed up may come from Skye or Scalpay across the water. It would probably be better to search at the autumn equinox when the plants would be bigger – but I am not usually here at that time of year.

There were, of course, lots of these:

Edible Sea Urchins

and these:

Seven-armed starfish

Seven always seems an odd number of limbs and it is, I think, pretty unusual.

Planning for 2019 Part 2

Taxa per tetrad recorded from 2000 to 2018 are shown here:

Some of those red squares really do have no plants, the only land being bare rock just above the high water line. More usefully, in terms of targets, the following tetrads have >5% land and <50 taxa recorded post-1999 :

Tetrad	Taxa post-99	% land
NG32H	0	23.3
NG35E	0	6.3
NG41T	0	48.1
NG41Y	0	8
NG46Q	0	100
NG23J	7	99.1
NG34I	46	100
NG41P	21	100
NG41U	48	100
NG42L	19	100
NG47G	41	100
NG52D	3	100
NG52E	25	100

These, or most of these, are a priority if only to achieve a sense of completeness. Many are not suitable for Skye Botany Group outings as they are a long walk in and/or potentially dull. An exception is NG47G where a walk along the Kilmaluag River should be profitable.

NG41T and Y will be tackled by boat from Elgol. Nick and I plan to do this and our skipper from last year’s Soay trip said he could drop us near Ulfhart Point. Others may wish to join us but be warned, this looks like rough country.

Someone who shall remain nameless has been promising to do NG52D and E for many a year but the time has come for me to do them. The remainder, I shall trudge into.

I have been through taxon by taxon looking at distribution maps like this one, where red dots on yellow squares mean a plant has not been seen in the hectad since before 2000 but has an earlier grid reference at least at the tetrad level – and often better.

For Skye, Raasay and Scalpay only (i.e. omitting the Small Isles, Soay and Rona) I have traced and analysed records of this type . This has been a subjective exercise both in terms of taxon selection and where there are several red dots for a taxon in a single yellow square, how many to trace.  I have mostly not included hybrids, microspecies and neophytes.

I ended up with 831 records of 299 taxa in 281 tetrads. Of the 299 taxa, 84 are listed in the VC104 Rare Plant Register.

Some of these are known to have gone e.g. a pool at Corran, Kensaleyre that contained Ruppia maritima was no longer there by 1997. Some I have already looked for and given time constraints I am unlikely to have another go this year.

Clearly, there are too many to attempt them all, so here are those 831 by hectad:

It looks like NG71 deserves some attention. The top ten tetrads in this system, each with ten or more taxa not re-found are:

Tetrad	Location	Count
NG64E	Umachan, Raasay	26
NG26R	Geary	20
NG71C	Kinloch	14
NG50Z	Tarskavaig/Achnacloich	14
NG71B	Isleornsay/Duisdalemore	14
NG52Q	Torrin	13
NG13Z	Loch an Fhridhein	13
NG37Q	Bornesketaig	11
NG26F	Trumpan	11
NG32P	Stockval/Loch Sleadale	10

Some of these could well make suitable sites for Skye Botany Group outings.

It is worth remembering that tetrad recording was not commonly undertaken in VC104 before 2000, so only 201 tetrads had 50 or more taxa recorded (and 125 had 100 or more of which 32 were down to my activities on Raasay). Some of the tetrads listed above are there because they are/were relative hotspots and so attracted recording last century.

Hectads shared with other vice-counties (NG60, NG71, NM47 with VC 97 (West-Invernessshire), NG63, NG64, NG65 with VC 105 (West Ross) and NG72, NG82 with both VC 97 and VC 105) arguably deserve less attention as there are also hectad records from these other VCs.

The taxa appearing in the Rare Plants Register also deserve more effort than the rest but I am going to stop there as I seem to have found enough to do for rather more than one recording season.

Planning for 2019 Part 1

This post concerns vascular plant & charophyte records only. Looking at records to date at the hectad level gives some idea of where to concentrate in this final year of recording for Atlas 2020.

VC 104 comprises part of 51 hectads (10 km squares of the British National Grid). No hectad is 100% land (including freshwater bodies), though four are >98% (NG43: 99.8%, NG42: 99.7%, NG45: 98.1%, NG34: 98.0%).

Total taxa per hectad recorded from 2000 to 2018 are shown here:

The low numbers are in hectads with small amounts of land. The following plots help to sort out any that are below the trend:

Some of those at the lower edge i.e. with fewer than might be expected for the land area, are noted.

The next image shows numbers of locally common plants not recorded during 2000-2018 for each hectad. In this context, locally common means that the plant has been recorded in at least 200 tetrads of VC104. (The vice-county has a total of 709 tetrads of which 654 have ≥5% land.)

High numbers of missing common plants are unsurprisingly associated with small land area. Again, plotting numbers against land area and omitting hectads with very small areas helps to sort out the outliers:

I have undertaken a lot of analysis of tetrad records and will present these in the next post. In general these are what will determine the recording strategy for 2019.

After a Bit of a Gap….

Quite a long gap really, since I last wrote on this site.  However, a review of plant recording in VC104 for July-December 2018 is on my BSBI page. With Jim McIntosh I have recently completed a country round-up for Scotland for the next BSBI News due out in April.

I have started on plans for this year’s recording and will publish some thoughts here soon. Members of Skye Botany Group can expect an e-mail some time this month.

The mild weather has brought out the insects with a white-tailed bumblebee in the garden in February and many moths being recorded on Skye. I put out the trap a couple of nights ago and had 5 Dotted Border, 1 Early Grey, 1 Common Quaker and 1 Chestnut.

Dotted Border

Early Grey

 

Raasay: Old & New

The weather has been so good recently that I have been tempted out to wander on Raasay. Two days ago I spotted two plants of Glebionis segetum (Corn Marigold) in flower on a road verge near Inverarish.

Glebionis segetum (Corn Marigold)

To quote my own words (lightly edited) “Reported in oat fields on Raasay and Fladday in 1930s and near Balachuirn in 1969. Lost with the cessation of arable farming. One plant emerged from soil brought in from Alness in Easter Ross for road repair purposes in 2006.”

These could have arisen from long-dormant seed following forestry operations, but seem more likely to be the result of scattered wildflower seed.

Yesterday I discovered about a dozen plants of Leycesteria formosa, (Himalayan Honeysuckle, Flowering Nutmeg, Himalaya Nutmeg or Pheasant Berry) near the dog kennels. This is a first in the wild for Raasay though it has been spreading rapidly on Skye and the adjacent mainland. Apart from Kinloch Castle on Rum, all vice-county records are in the 2005 to 2018 range and it is now known in 13 tetrads in Skye and Raasay. This is likely to be an underestimate given that Seth and I added a tetrad in Uig ten days ago and I added the one on Raasay this week.

Leycetseria in November

Micromoths (2)

Following my last post I went looking for Knopper galls on the oaks near the Old Manse here on Raasay but as usual there were no acorns – so no galls (and yes, I know these are caused by a gall wasp not a moth)  However, in the beech hedge there was a green-island leaf mine:

Phyllonorycter maestingella on Fagus sylvatica

I was interested to see that the green-island effect induced by leaf-miners is mediated by bacterial symbionts, at least in the closely related Phyllonorycter blancardella:                            https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20356892

“Curing leaf-miners of their symbiotic partner resulted in the absence of green-island formation on leaves, increased compensatory larval feeding and higher insect mortality. Our results suggest that bacteria impact green-island induction through manipulation of cytokinin levels.”

On another note, the 1952 paper referred to in the last post does not appear to have any micromoths in it.

Micromoths

Recently, this Nettle-tap was on the outside of the house:

Common Nettle-tap

A few days later I went toward Oskaig to look for Ectoedemia argyropeza (Virgin Pigmy) on fallen aspen leaves which Seth had found on Skye. It makes a green island on the leaf:

Ectoedemia argyropeza                          Photo S. Gibson

I failed to find that one but did find leaf mines caused by moth larvae on hazel and rusty sallow leaves:

Stigmella floslactella and Parornix devoniella mines on Hazel

Caloptilia stigmatella on Salix cinerea subsp. oleifolia

Thanks to Seth and Tony for help with identification.

Meanwhile, I dug out the following paper which lists 329 species of butterflies and moths including 98 micromoths, details of which I extracted to a spreadsheet and sent to Keith the County Moth Recorder:

HARRISON J W HESLOP (1937) The Lepidoptera of the Isle of Raasay and of the adjacent Islands of Scalpay, South Rona, Fladday and Longay. Proceedings of the University of Durham Philosophical Society 9  305-328

Nine of these have been accepted as new to the vice-county:

Acleris logiana	Grey Birch Button
Apotomis sauciana	Bilberry Marble
Argyroploce arbutella	Bearberry Marble
Cnephasia incertana	Light Grey Tortrix
Dichrorampha plumbagana	Silver-Lined Drill
Dichrorampha plumbana	Lead-Coloured Drill
Philedone gerningana	Cinquefoil Twist
Phyllonorycter scopariella	Broom Midget
Teleiopsis diffinis	Large Groundling

Now I am looking out this paper to see if there are more I can add:

HARRISON J W HESLOP & J K MORTON (1952) Lepidoptera in the Isles of Raasay, Rhum (vc104), Lewis and Harris (vc110) in 1951. The Entomologist 85 6-13

Hawkweeds 2018

Spoiler alert: Special Interest only!

I collected 11 specimens this year around VC 104 and sent them to David McCosh who says they are nearly all new 10km square records.

The most interesting was Hieracium ascendentidens  from near Colbert Point  for which David had only one previous record from VC 104.

Others were H. beebyanum, H. caledonicum, H. cerinthiforme, H. orimeles, H. rubicundiforme, H. strictiforme and 2 H. triviale (previously H. vulgatum).

Two could not be determined. One from the Druim na Ciche area is close to H. lagganense “but is ruled out by having obtuse rather than narrowly acute phyllaries.” A plant from Gedintailor “has some elements in common with H. uistense but not enough to be acceptable”.

October

We don’t usually see snow in October:

View from the garden

But the weeds are still flowering in the vegetable garden at sea level:

Veronica peregrina

Veronica persica

Ranunculus sceleratus

(All of these are rare locally.)