Chilly welly wander

I've been wondering who had yanked up the liverwort on top of an old spruce stump (a Christmas tree from a long ago Boggy Brae family). This morning I saw a magpie mining the wood, presumably looking for grubs or ants. I wasn't quick enough to get a pic.

Down there beside the stump the ground is very soggy... well, it's soggy everywhere at the moment!

The lichen and the mosses on the stump are lovely.

From higher up the garden I was surprised to see some snow on the hills to the north but I noticed that the rain had hit "Scrawny" from the north-west so I guess what was rain here was snow a bit higher and 'norther'.

Scrawny's trunk dry on one side

Wet and ivy-clad on the other

I enjoyed the colours of fallen leaves, young birch bark, and dying lemon-scented fern. It was chillier than I expected out there. I haven't taken my hat off yet.

The cheek of roe deer

A couple of days ago I noticed how well the Irrepressible Rose that grows by the front porch was doing. It was well leaved and the main shoot had wound a little into the support trellis. This morning my jaw dropped when I opened the storm doors and noticed most of the leaves had gone!

The culprits are roe deer. They browse. They nibble. Nothing is sacred. Blighters! ;)

They (or it) had stripped the two lesser shoots as well.

The mosses underneath one of the rose shoots are looking good though. These three are Atrichum undulatum (Common Smoothcap–the one with capsules), Thuidium tamariscum (Common Tamarisk-moss–the 'lacy', pale one), and Calliergonella cuspidata (Pointed Spear-moss–the feathery one with sharp points). All three are very common on the Boggy Brae but no less lovely for all that.

Young Hart's-tongue ferns near the porch rose had also been visited by the nibbler.

Oh to have been there, invisible, scentless, and with night vision, when the deer came so close!

Turning around to look at the dry stone wall behind me, I enjoyed the lichen patterns on some of the rocks. You can see pics here

And here's a closer look at tile and moss patterns on the old porch floor

The Lophocolea Stump

I've posted before (here, here, and here, the last one just now on 27Feb16) about the old spruce stump whose top is covered in the liverwort Lophocolea heterophylla (Variable-leaved Crestwort). Recently I noticed signs new activity on the stump.

The mat of Crestwort is quite thick now–it has been growing for a few years–but some dark patches appeared, and a small, darker green spot.

When I went to investigate, it appeared that something (a bird, looking for food, perhaps?) had pulled up some of the liverwort and dropped the pieces. There were also some bits of rotten wood. These break of at the edges very easily now.

The darker green spot is a different bryophyte, a moss I haven't identified yet, but which, on closer inspection revealed reflexed hair points at their tips.






There are other mosses, lichens, and sometimes slime moulds on the stump as new life grows on and around it and recycles its resources. Years ago, when it was just a bare stump, I wrapped a piece of hose around it. That's still there and part of the scenery. I've been reluctant to pull it off, not least because I'll have to find somewhere else to put it, but maybe I should before the spring growth of the grasses, heath bedstraw, ferns and rushes!

a frosted Polytrichum

Been trying a new way of loading photos. Hmm...

Bonfire Moss

Bonfire Moss

Bonfire Moss (Funaria hygrometrica) looking cheerful made up for the lack of wildflowers in flower that were findable on my #NewYearPlantHunt (see more under that hashtag on Twitter) for the Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland (BSBI) on the first two days of the year.

spruce seedling where it's not wanted

In the middle of this bonfire site I discovered another baby spruce tree. Sorry, dude, but you have to go! Norway and Sitka Spruce fans, don't worry, there are gazillions just up the hill. That's why we keep getting seedlings in the Boggy Brae garden, even though The New Sylva claims that Norway Spruce "rarely produces viable seed in Britain". It seems to around here! Judging by the number of Norway Spruce cones I find, I think the seedlings are that species rather than Sitka.







Here is my 2016 New Year Plant Hunt list:
Bramble (just one)
Common Gorse
Common Cat's-ear (2 miserable-looking specimens)
Daisy (1)
Dandelion (1, not in the least bit chirpy like they are in the spring!)

Boggy Brae dandelion from last April

People in southern English counties are finding long lists of New Year flowering wild plants. Here we still have proper winters! It's not so much a temperature thing, though there is that as well of course, as a light thing up here, I reckon.

Alongside some hedging

Yesterday was a lovely warm but breezy autumn day so I took the opportunity to do some hedge-cutting. The Boggy Brae 'north-west passage' between the birch bank and the rhododendron hedge needed widened again. The photo to the right shows the widest bit. It gets narrower as you progress south-eastwards:

You have to negotiate that bit with one foot on the 'path' and one on the steep bank to the right. In a couple of spots right next to the path, heather (Ling/Calluna vulgaris) has established itself. I want that to spread. There's also a tiny rowan tree. I haven't decided whether to let that stay there yet. I do like rowan trees.

Between blasts at the hedge with the hedge-cutter and while raking up the cuttings, I found several toadstools. I don't know their names yet.

I think this one is a milkcap (Lactarius). It best fits the description of L. azonites rather than Birch Milkcap (L. tabidus) or Grey Milkcap (L. vietus). None of them are edible.

Also down there at the bottom of the bank is my latest bryophytic find, the liverwort Greater Featherwort (Plagiochila asplenioides).







And the autumnal dying back of Self-heal is lovely to watch:

Today is dreich and the hills have put on their invisibility cloak so the other side of the hedge will have to wait.

Enjoying green

Cutting down a buddleia that had 'gone over' this afternoon revealed some lovely bryophytes on the spruce log that had been in its shade. The bright green in the photo to the right and below is Whiskered Veilwort (Metzgeria temperata)

Metzgeria temperata

Lophocolea bidentata is the pale green one

On top of the log is mainly Rustwort (Nowellia curvifolia) but with small patches of other plants. The pale liverwort to the right is Bifid Crestwort (Lophocolea bidentata).

In the photo below the two feathery strands of moss in the middle are Common Feather-moss (Kindbergia praelonga) and at bottom right Pointed Spear-moss (Calliergonella cuspidata).

And elsewhere...

Variable Crisp-moss (Trichostomum brachydontium).
I love the brightness of this one.

Green Mountain Fringe-moss
(Racomitrium fasciculare)

Sycamore leaves with dots of Tar Spot fungus,
a sign of clean air

Looking down on the leaves of Libertia grandiflora

Green behind a head of Whorled Caraway seeds

Pleuridium acuminatum or maybe not...

Update 25 Aug: I keep going to look at the plants to see if the setae have grown. So far they haven't and any capsules there are are still nestling between leaves. That is, unless what I'm seeing are all antheridia and there are no capsules! I don't think they are all antheridia though because the leaves are not 'open' around them. <still confused of the Boggy Brae>

~~~~~~~~~

The post from 21 Aug

I am by no means certain, but I think this moss, growing on soil near Atrichum undulatum and some other mosses, is Taper-leaved Earth-moss (Pleuridium acuminatum).

E.V.Watson says it is a small and rather inconspicuous moss. I agree with him about the size but I thought the intense green colour of the moss next to the quite different and mostly darker green Atrichum was striking. It and the 'slightly secund' (pointing in one direction) leaves is what made me notice it when I was right above it chucking stuff into my dead-hedge.

Pic to the left shows a couple of shoots of Atrichum undulatum in the top right corner.

One of the difficulties (apart from my ignorance) that presented itself while trying to identify this moss was that the books I have say different and sometimes contradictory things. With regard to leaves pointing in one direction AJE Smith in The Moss Flora of Britain and Ireland says that the leaves are more or less erect or 'slightly secund'. Watson, in British Mosses and Liverworts says that the leaves "are not curved to one side (falcato-secund)". Hmm. The Field Guide of the British Bryological Society (BBS) says the leaves are "usually erect and occasionally slightly turned to one side". I concluded that the Boggy Brae shoots, all several thousand of them, are of the occasional type.

The photo to the right shows the typical size of the shoots, which fits the BBS statement that they are often less than 1cm tall. This one does look fairly erect, possibly because it has a capsule.

capsule and perichaetal leaves 

To the right I was looking down on a capsule.
Correction 22 Aug: Seems this is an antheridium. Thanks due to Richard Lansdown for that.









In among the Earth-moss shoots were just four of another very tiny moss shown below. Its identification is for another day.