Another Mystery Plant

Tired of weeding the bank where a great deal of Pyramidal Bugle grows, and getting bitten by ants in the process, tired of scything long grass beside the target archery boss and getting pestered by clegs (horse flies), tired of lopping a straggly holly tree that is trying to take over the world, I downed tools and went into the shade in the western corner of the Boggy Brae garden with my camera. I'm still trying to photograph mosses successfully. Getting there... perhaps. The idea is that the photos help with identification.

This is what is growing on the top of the wall under goat willow and yet more holly. I need to look at a sample under the microscope before I name it with any confidence.

with ferns Maidenhair Spleenwort (upper)
and Hart's Tongue Fern

Then I looked down and saw this gound-hugging plant:

The glassy-looking object in the bottom left corner was initially mystifying but we've found a good deal of broken glass in the garden over the years so I went back up to see if I could find whatever it was.

Turned out to be an octagonal glass bead! Ah well, I suppose it's a sign of the Boggy Brae having been lived on for the last one and a quarter centuries or so.

The picture below shows the bristle-like hairs growing out of the upper surfaces of the leaves which, given no 'inflorescence' as the flower books say, proved very useful in identifying the plant.

If I've got it right (happy to be corrected if not), I am very excited to have found Opposite-leaved Golden Saxifrage (Chrysoplenium oppositifolium) for the first time ever. Depending which book you look at it flowers from March to July. Most say March to May. I think that perhaps its sister plant, Alternate-leaved Golden Saxifrage is the later flowerer. It does seem as if I've missed the flowering period this year. Something to look out for next spring. Roger Phillips, he of the photographic identification books, says it "can be eaten as a vegetable". The Octopus Wild Flower book (Octopus is the publisher) by Dietmar Aichele and illustrated by Marianne Golte-Bechtle says that the Alternate-leaved one was known as a medicinal plant but that "so far [1973] no active principle has been found in it". Maybe it cured a bit of winter scurvy if people ate it in the early spring.

All the books say this saxifrage grows in wet places. Well yeah! Three cheers for the Boggy Brae!