Rusty Swan-neck Moss

A while ago I thought I had identified a moss as Broom Fork Moss. Today I found another sample of that moss in another place and I think I was mistaken then and it is in fact Rusty Swan-neck Moss (Campylopus flexuosus)

<< This is one of the photos I posted up at the end of August.



Below is today's photo. Shoots of the Rusty Swan-neck Moss are at the extreme left and extreme right of the picture.

Both samples have the required matted reddish rhizoids.

30Aug2014

20Oct2014

Today I went and got another sample from the original spruce log and compared it with the new sample, which is also on a rotting log but I don't know what kind of wood it is. Delighted to find a curved over seta, which is what I presume the swan-neck of the name refers to. I think the seta straightens up a bit as the capsule ripens but still preserves some swan-neckiness!

The black blob on the capsule is a bit of muck and not significant (except as muck). I was glad to get some rhizoid and the capsule's 'hat' in the same pic. The hat is called a calyptra.







I decided to blog this info because today's discovery means I have to delete my record for #boggybraemoss 14 and put another in its place. I've already recorded Rusty as moss number 28. So this is my reminder to post my next species as #boggybraewild as 162, not 208, as it would be if I hadn't made the mistake. That makes sense to me even if doesn't make sense to anyone else!

UPDATE at 1935 on 20 Oct 2014
As it happens, I had used number 161 twice so could use bbw162 for one of those. So the next moss up–photos anon– is Cypress-leaved Plait-moss/Hypnum cupressiforme which will be bbw208, bbmoss14.

Two revisions

I have learned this morning that what I have been calling Bog Pimpernel (Anagallis tenella) at the Boggy Brae is actually New Zealand Willowherb (Epilobium brunnescens). I'd seen some pics of Bog Pimpernel via Twitter and begun to wonder. My flower was the wrong colour for a start and on one of the Twitter pics, there were two flowers on one stem. Hmm. I should have realised before now that the seed pods of the Boggy Brae plant were a huge clue to its willowherbiness!

I asked some questions, sent a couple of people a link to my incorrect blog post about Bog Pimpernel, and did another careful search in my flower books. W Keble Martin mentions a plant called Alpine Willowherb (Epilobium anagallidifolium) whose leaves are similar but the stem's not right. Then I turned to The Wildflowers of Britain and Northern Europe by Fitter, Fitter and Blamey (1974). FF&B have a picture and description of New Zealand Willowherb and it is exactly the BB plant. Yay!

And all that before breakfast! Gotta be good.

Here's a link to the pics on Wiki of Epilobium brunnescens and here's one to my now corrected blog post from last year



Now to That Pink Stuff. I was thinking yesterday evening that the anonymous commenter (Thank you, Nonny Mous) on my first post about the pinkish-red gloop was probably right, or nearly so. He or she thought it might be puke. Yes, it could easily be that. Alternatively, bird shit.

The blobby bits in this pic could easily be raspberry seeds,

the seta-like things I referred to could easily be from wild raspberries,

and the colour is right for raspberries that went through, or half way down and out again, some creature's alimentary canal damn quick!

Here is someone else's photo of raspberry seeds via Flickr

I'm used to seeing the berry shit of blackbirds when the summer berries ripen but I'd never seen anything this colour before. What a wonderful example, though, of how seeds get spread around with their own little packets of manure!

What a wonderful explanation of how wild raspberries grow in all sorts of places at the Boggy Brae and, finally, what a wonderful example of what a chump I am at times how I learn stuff! I reckon I've just earned myself a bacon butty.

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!

Glasgow Botanic Gardens

My friend Little She Bear and I paid a visit to Glasgow Botanic Gardens. We took our time wandering around the glasshouses, overtaken repeatedly by faster viewers as we stopped to peer at tiny things and to marvel at southern hemisphere plants. We reached saturation point long before we'd seen everything or even done the riverside walk so we'll have to go back again. One thing about the outside that struck me was that, where meadows had been left to grow, those of the Boggy Brae compared well. I didn't, for instance, see heath bedstraw or tormentil or pignut. Chuffed.

Now browse and enjoy some sights from the glasshouses:

Out of this "furry" stem

This grows

Yellow flowers closed

Yellow flowers open and the seed heads forming

Large onion-like basal 'stems'

from which sprout this fine-leaved greenery

Euphorbias aplenty that I wouldn't have recognised as euphorbias without the labels!

A plant whose leaves look like a plait (hair braid)

DerbyshireDaughter would have loved the succulents house. I will take you there at the first opportunity :)