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...

More drains and a new liverwort

This drain runs roughly north to south along the retaining wall back terrace and turns at a right angle round the corner below.

I've removed most of the ferns so I can clear the drain

Making the water that seeps almost continuously down the hill run round the terrace edge rather than straight across it and into the wash-house means we have a dry(ish) threshold. It also turns out that maintaining drains is fun because you find stuff. I found more Trailing St.John's-wort (Hypericum humifusum) and more Toad Rushes (Juncus bufonius). See left; a Toad Rush is 'bridging' the ditch at the right-hand side of the pic. Most importantly though, I found a new species of liverwort, one of the Riccia genus. I'm sending a sample off to be identified and recorded properly.

It's quite tricky, I found, to photograph a small liverwort in situ when its 'situ' is a more or less vertical piece of ditch bank on the ditch side farther from a retaining wall. The exercise requires an old camping mat to prevent one from getting soaked lying on wet ground for a start. I suppose I could have just got soaked, being so close to home but I probably would have given up sooner in that case.

I found an old stone painting of Toadlet's and used it to mark opposite the spot of my discovery. As it happens I found more of the same Riccia as I cleared out the ditch further.

Some animal wildlife kept me company: this tiny moth decided to flutter about in the wheelbarrow into which I was chucking ditch dirt.

A caterpillar on the wall was charging around (in caterpillar terms) for quite a while among the hornwort,

Caterpillar and hornwort

and a rather weary looking Angle-shades moth  decided to walk up my arm at one point. I repositioned him on a lungwort leaf where he stayed for the remainder of my ditch digging time.

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.

Plum bank south-east

Link to today's post on my Wordpress blog ArgyllGarden: Plum bank south-east

Hairy Bitter Cress

Hairy Bitter Cress has a sister plant called Wavy Bitter Cress (Cardamine flexuosa), which I wrote about here. The most important distinguishing features, at least that I can make out, are firstly that Wavy has six stamens and Hairy has four, and secondly that the seed pods of Wavy only grow up to the height of the flowers whereas those of Hairy grow beyond as shown in the photo below.

Hairy Bitter Cress
(Cardamine hirsuta)

The flowers are tiny and always seems to be closed when I come across the plants so determining the number of stamens is a fiddlesome job with fine tweezers under a microscope.

The fruit pedicels of Hairy grow beyond the flowers in part, I think, because they are erect, relatively speaking, whereas they are more spreading in Wavy. The stems of Hairy are straight, relatively speaking too, whereas wavy gets its name from its more wavy stems.

C. hirsuta erect seed pods
and relatively straight stem

In the Boggy Brae garden I found Wavy on April 21 and Hairy just today, May 19.

Hairy Bitter Cress is boggybrae wild plant no.54 for 2015.

Wavy Bitter Cress (Cardamine flexuosa)

Quick edit... probably my best pic of Wavy, showing the "oh so flexuoso" stems: