Midsummer lush on the Boggy Brae

All photos taken between 21 and 26 June 2015. They are "embiggable" by clicking on them.

Heath Bedstraw lawn, Pignut in the background

Pignut is making seed by midsummer

Orange Hawkweed lawn patch

Garden geraniums flowering well this year

Foxglove and young oak

"Up top"

Bluebells making seed

Nettle flowers yellow stage

Nettle flowers glassy stage

Yorkshire Fog and Ground Elder

Sage flowers

Add caption

The first rose by the woodshed

A Fissidens Moss

I found a Fissidens moss (my first) in the bare earth where the Wayfarer used to be. It has proved tricky to exactly pinpoint the species.

It has a "distinct bend" in its nerve, which characteristic is only mentioned in the blurb about F. celticus (Welsh Pocket-moss which also grows in the west of Scotland), but I found capsules with my sample and apparently F. celticus doesn't produce capsules.

showing "distinct bend" in the leaf nerve

If the photo to the left is enlarged by clicking on it it's possible to see that the leaves are bordered which also rules out F. celticus.

I wondered about F. curnovii (Curnov's Pocket-moss) because of rhizoids in the mud that looked slightly reddish under the microscope. However, they could just be a bright brown. F. curnovii is said to have a more heavily thickened border than F. bryoides which it ressembles. I wouldn't describe the leaf borders I could see as heavily anything.


And so I am plumping for Fissidens bryoides (Lesser Pocket-moss) which has the virtue of being 'common' for a start and whose setae arise terminally on the shoots. I couldn't see any "bud-like male organs" in my sample. Here are some pics of capsules at various stages and another of leaves.

Forgetmenots pink, yellow and blue

Changing Forgetmenot (Myosotis discolor)

I noticed the first forgetmenots this morning on my way up to the shed so I was distracted from my bracken pulling for a while. Officially, Changing Forgetmenots start out yellow and then change to blue. I'm counting that one in the photo as yellow after much checking of its other properties, such as having a corolla tube shorter than the calyx. See below.

Forgetmenots seem to be popular with aphids, winged and unwinged.

The following photo was taken in June last year and shows the Boggy Brae

pink form of Yellow or Changing Forgetmenot.

Sand and grass

This old whisky bottle filled with layers of sand –they were level but got a bit squidged when a plumber took it under the bathroom – used to be the base of a lamp. It hasn't been the base of a lamp for a number of years now and has just been kicking around gathering dust. I needed some sand to help me identify a grass yesterday, so I poured a bit of the sand into an egg cup...

grass and sand

...so that I could take this close-up photo in my attempt to identify the grass.

I think this tufty grass is what Francis Rose and
C E Hubbard call Fine-leaved Sheep's Fescue (Festuca tenuifolia) and what Keble Martin calls Awnless Sheep's Fescue. My final confirmation, at least until someone more gramineously knowledgeable than I am corrects it, came when I saw how similar were my photo and the illustration in Hubbard's book. The book's drawings are acknowledged as being mostly by Joan Sampson.

My photo, taken under midge attack.

Joan Sampson's drawing

This species is #boggybrae #wildplant 125 for 2015.

Midsummer finds on a midgy brae

I spotted a white foxglove so donned my midge jacket and went for a closer look. Then I did a Boggy Brae wander in search of whatever might have turned up since my last look. My searches are not aimless. I remember where things have turned up before and keep checking to see if they reappear. Sometimes something new turns up.

First I looked round the base of a wild cherry tree to check the progress of the Lesser Stitchwort that lives there. Sitting on an old, punctured Thermarest mattress that last summer my grandsons used as a summer sledge down the Boggy Brae banks, and peering through the midge netting covering my face, I took some hazy photos of it.

Lesser Stitchwort (Stellaria graminea)

In my quest to remember botanical names I shall think of this as the star flower in the grass. the Latin name actually describes it perfectly. Was stitchwort a cure for stitches or does the English name mean something else?

I enjoyed the haziness of the photos when I looked at them on the Mac.

Then I spotted something reddish purple where red clover does not gow but where a Northern Marsh Orchid has been known to pop up. Sure enough, that's what it was. I left its protecting Cat's-ear in situ and marked the spot for mowers to avoid.

Checking other known orchid spots, I found another Northern Marsh Orchid among the tall fescue grass on the south-east bank and the leaves and early spike of a Southern Marsh Orchid on the north-east bank where it has flowered for several years.

Northern Marsh Orchid (Dactylorhiza purpurella)

Southern Marsh Orchid (Dactylorhiza praetermissa)
at summer solstice this year

Southern Marsh Orchid,
in the same spot as above,
at summer solstice last year

In the boggy lawn below the north-east bank clumps of Star Sedge are making a pale yellowish haze.

Star Sedge (Carex echinata)

The Yellow Flags have finally got going and the flag patch looks good with the Meadow Buttercups around it.

Toad has finally got rid of his Wayfarer dinghy that hasn't been on the water for a decade. The Vice-Commodore of a local sailing club has taken it away to make it seaworthy again so it can be used as a training boat. We're pleased about that. I had mentioned that I needed to have it moved so that I could burn the pampas grass. Once every few years the clump needs to be set alight in dry weather to keep it under control. The little Topaz dinghy has been dragged up the hill a bit to be out of the way too. There's a big muddy patch where they have been and I discovered a new plant, which almost but not quite got crushed in the boat moving operations – boat moving operations that required a tow rope and the Rattletrap in haul away mode because the boat trolley wheels had sunk so far into the mud that they were unbudgeable without a fair tonnage of pulling power. Bog power!

This is the new plant. It's nearly a metre tall. The leaves are mostly basal and are flat and ridged with slightly ripply edges. If anyone recognises it, please do let me know. There are mosses and liverworts in the Boat Bog area too. More on them anon.