Brave New Whorled

Whorled Caraway is a plant that I've wanted to see for some time, yet have never really made any effort to track down. Last year I learned that it grows on Skye (see what I mean - I should have known that already, I've been living here for coming up four years, after all). A few weeks back I learned that it grew along a burn near to Sligachan Hotel and this afternoon I received this map from local BSBI recorder Stephen Bungard

Rough and ready pic of a screenshot type thing....

The blue dots along the burn indicate the position of Whorled Caraway plants from an August 2012 survey. You can read Stephen's blogpost about these particular plants by clicking here. The landscape can't have altered very much, if any, since then so I had high hopes of simply wandering the burnside vegetation and finding lots of lovely Carum underfoot. Fool that I am.

Several hundred metres west of Sligichan Hotel, looking east towards the Red Cuillins 

The first layby held several vehicles, I disdained it in favour of a larger layby several hundred metres further up the road. This would place me somewhat beyond the western extremity of Stephen's map, all I had to do was follow the burn eastwards and find the plants. I cut north from the road, found the burn and slowly wandered east towards the hotel. After a short while of yomping through deep Molinia and heather patches, I figured any Whorled Caraway would have to be in full flower and stand at least five feet tall for me to have a fighting chance of finding it. Sadly, it tops out at a shorter height than the dense sward of Molinia I was wading through. I headed for higher, and drier, ground and headed cross country straight for the hotel, hoping the vegetation there would be a bit lower and more conducive to searching.  

Larval mine and cut-out of Heliozella resplendella - just a couple of previous Skye records for this moth

I was being mercilessly harassed my swarms of midges, my midge spray was back indoors so I just had to shut up and put up as best I could. Not fun. Eventually I found myself walking through the shallow burn itself, far quicker and easier than picking my way through acres of deep Molinia and I soon outpaced the midges. Hateful wee things. And then, growing pretty much with its feet in the water, I spied this

(it's the white blob...)

For anybody out there sweeping the internet for plant gen...

I wish I had taken a bit more time obtaining decent pics of my first Whorled Caraway plants, because they have a whole suite of lovely features to appreciate. As it was, they all turned out shite. I could blame the hordes of biting midges. I could blame the dull weather conditions. But essentially, I had the camera on the wrong settings and I'm a complete dolt. Anyway, more poor pics follow...

So far we can see that it's a rather finely proportioned umbellifer, somewhat similar to Pignut I felt, though with obvious red anthers. But the basal leaves are a sight to behold

To my eye, these look more like the aquatic Mare's-tail than the leaves of an umbellifer. The arrangement of these deeply dissected leaves around the stem gives the plant its name (though apparently they are not true whorls, as such. But anyways...)

After a good deal of being eaten by midges, stepping into water-filled hollows and almost falling arse over tit, I emerged next to a metal walkway leading from the layby I forsook in favour of another. Guess what I found growing right next to this walkway, maybe 60ft from the layby...

Spot the white flowerhead amongst the pink heather?

In under a minute I was at the roadside layby. Several minutes of road verge walking later I was back in the layby where I'd chosen to park. At least I now know where to park for next time! 

This is from the last Maiden CD I bought, quite some while back now... 

But this, without a doubt, is the best track on that album (in my opinion)