Taking it Easy

After yesterday's adventures up Ben Lawers, I was pleased to find that I could still walk. Not so Ghostie, who was hobbling around the room like a broken thing. My suggestion that we return to the summit of Ben Lawers elicited a particularly withering death stare. Guess not then... My second suggestion that we keep to level terrain was met with a more favourable response. We had gen for quite a few plants along the Ben Lawers road, we would try for a number of these before wending our way northwards to Kingussie, which would be our base for the next two nights. 

Our room was on the third floor. Heading down was easy enough, but I could definitely feel it in my legs heading back up again. I've never in my life experienced leg fatigue that lasted through to the next day, I guess I really must be getting old. But a quick wander around our first destination soon sorted out any residual aches and from that point onwards I was fine for the rest of the week. Just as well really, because several more mountains were very definitely on the agenda.

I should mention that this is going to be another plant-heavy post, apologies if plants aren't your thing.

What started as a roadside twitch for Tuberous Comfrey set a trend that would last the duration of our adventure. We couldn't find the target plant, but ended up finding lots of other goodies instead, something we repeated several times more. And when I say 'goodies', what I actually mean is 'stuff I don't see on Skye'. Like this lot, all from one small site

Buddleja, Blackcurrant and Marjoram - which kinda sounds like a swishy posh jam flavour

I had to ask The Ghost to confirm the Marjoram, it's been that long since I last saw the stuff! There were several more dross plants to be found including a couple that were new to Ghostie. First up was this patch of pure garbage

Lesser Knotweed. Yawn.....

A somewhat better lifer for him, seeing as it's a proper native and hence was on his list of target plants, were the several patches of Northern Bedstraw that we found growing on a woodland edge

Poor photo of Northern Bedstraw - it's actually a very nice plant in real life

I spotted a patch of robust-looking Hypericum growing alongside the Northern Bedstraw. A quick check of the leaves with my handlens revealed a complete lack of perforations. "This must be Imperforate St John's-wort, I need that!" I excitedly exclaimed, but Ghostie was having none of it. He opened the key and we duly worked through the couplets, it ran to species very easily. And what was it? Imperforate St John's-wort, of course! There are quite a few 'common' plants that I've somehow missed/overlooked and this was one of them so, for me at least, it was a pleasing and rather satisfying find. Doubly so when I learned that Ghostie didn't need it, those are the absolute best ones! Naturally I took lots of pics, but they were all crap. Here's one showing the rounded sepals and clasping stem leaves

Imperforate St John's-wort. Trust me, the rest of the pics are even worse!

We found a large Euphorbia that we haven't yet managed to identify, but had to admit defeat with the Tuberous Comfrey. Our next port of call was Weem Woods which has a naturalised population of Chinese Ragwort somewhere near the car park. Twenty minutes later and...

Chinese Ragwort as seen from afar

It took all of about five seconds to find the Chinese Ragwort growing just outside the car park, and then a couple more minutes to decide that neither of us could in any way be arsed to push through the thickets of brambles and nettles between us and it. Unenthusiastic sums it up. Anyway, job done - plastic dross ticked without any effort or skill required on our part. It all seemed a bit daft, really. After yesterday's botanical adventures at high altitude, ticking this alien plant by a car park seemed somehow pleasureless and lame. But fuckit, in the murky underworld of pan-species listing, a tick is a tick and that's all that counts (I jest, that's not at all what pan-species listing is about. Clearly the real objective is to see more species than your friends have...)

Now would be a good time to make mention of a few non-plant species, though technically plants are still quite heavily involved. First up, I found lots of these distinctive spots on a patch of Upland Enchanter's Nightshade

A quick look at the underside of the leaves revealed the fruiting bodies of Puccinia circaeae

Nearby we found a sapling Alder that had many inflated leaves, these also caused by a fungus

These blister galls are caused by Taphrina tosquinetii, a widespread fungus of Alder

We headed eastwards to pick up the northbound A9 into Speyside, which is where we planned to spend the rest of our trip. En route we called in at Logierait for a delightful plant that grows in one small area

This is Motherwort, a fantastic looking beast of a plant

Ghostie had never seen this plant before, whereas I've seen it here a couple of times already, so it was nice to be able to lead him straight to it. We soon noticed a few of these flymines on the leaves

Amauromyza labiatarum - note the diffuse greenish frass

There are several species of agromyzids that mine Motherwort, but I was fairly confident this would be Amauromyza labiatarum, a species I ordinarily find on Hedge Woundwort on Skye. I popped the image onto iRecord where Barry Warrington, the agromyzid national scheme recorder, soon verified the ID.

Ghostie had gen for a plant neither of us had seen before, somewhere just over the river. The directions mentioned a wooden bridge - I knew exactly where that lay, so we set off on a new twitch. Within minutes we were across the bridge and closing in on our next lifer

This is Pontic Blue-sowthistle, a bit of a mouthful and a bit of a beast of a plant too! It towered above the roadside Bracken, reaching a height of maybe seven or eight feet tall. Unlike some other Blue-sowthistles, this species isn't rhizomatous, a quick look downwards proved that this was one multi-stemmed plant and not a clump of several plants. The gen we were using is from quite a few years back, I wondered how long these plants survive before dying. Above the Pontic Blue-sowthistle were oaks. I don't get to see oaks very often on Skye, and a sneaky peek upwards added a nice fungus to my yearlist. Oh, did I mention that The Ghost challenged me to see who can achieve the highest PSL for the year? No? Well he did, I probably ought to have mentioned the mildew all over the oak leaves, but....

Erysiphe alphitoides - Oak Mildew. I bet he never even noticed it....with luck

You'll notice in the images above that the sun was shining. Well that sure didn't last. The clouds rolled in and the rain it did fall. We took shelter beneath the wooden bridge, which kinda worked until the rain became so heavy that we were soon being soaked by huge drops of water leaking through the wooden slats above. Ghostie reached for his trusty umbrella whilst I stood there, in a t-shirt, getting thoroughly sodden. Maybe he'd noticed me sneakily checking out the oak mildew after all? Despite the grim conditions, we soon realised that the carpet of umbellifers all around us were a little different to Cow Parsley, which is what I'd already dismissed it as being. Luckily, The Ghost was paying attention and realised the seedpods were all wrong for that

I plucked the tip of a frond and rubbed it between my fingertips. One quick sniff - phew! Yep, it smelled very strongly of aniseed, not one of my favourite smells, but diagnostic of Sweet Cicely - which just so happened to be a new plant for The Ghost. Blimey, he was properly racking up the lifers so far this trip, probably three times as many as I was attaining. I spied a few leaf mines on Himalayan Balsam, which proved to be the first record of Phytoliriomyza melampyga for the vice county (I forgot to say that we found mines of Agromyza alnivora on Alder at the base of Ben Lawers yesterday - also a VC first. Clearly lots of room for improvement in East Perthshire!) 

It's not a shit shot, it's 'art'.....

Finally the rain passed, we made a dash for the car and were soon heading northwards up the A9. I'd booked us a room for two nights in Kingussie, followed by two nights in Grantown-on-Spey. We weren't expected until early evening, so had a good few hours to kill before needing to check in. Despite having info for a bucketload of plants between here and Kingussie, we skipped past most of them and just stormed northwards. Our target was Invertromie, near Insh Marshes RSPB. The Aspen woodlands here hold Dark Bordered Beauty, a rare moth that I'd never seen. Apparently all we needed to do was 'walk around' and they were easy. We 'walked around'. No sign, damnit. However, true to form, we found stuff regardless. And, staying true to form, The Ghost scooped a shedload of lifers against my handful. However, hats off to him, he emerged grinning from scrub with something cupped in his hands (I hope that doesn't read too wrong, lol) 

Oooooh, wissit?

It's a bit of a lump, eh!

And placed on a slightly more photogenic leaf

Ghostie reckoned it was Agapanthia villosoviridescens, the Golden-bloomed Longhorn. I disagreed. I scanned around, not a Hogweed in sight, a bit like the 'golden bloom' which also was not in sight. But I didn't know what else it could be. I knew there was a similar species recently arrived in southern England that bored into thistles, but that seemed pretty damn unlikely up here in Speyside. I took a video of it, just in case it was something significantly awesome. 

I don't know why my camera produces that creaking noise, and I certainly can't remember hearing it at the time. I think it is more apparent when I'm zoomed in. Annoying, whatever it is.

Anyway, we sussed the identity of the beetle later that night. It's the Aspen feeding Saperda carcharias and is well-known from the area. Got there in the end...

Whilst looking for day-disturbed Dark Bordered Beauties, I stumbled across a patch of Chickweed-wintergreen, it being yet another plant which was new to Ghostie. They'd finished flowering some time back, but the resulting seed pod is just amazing! It looks like a cross between a tiny football and an alien's face!!

The Aspens here are big, mature buggers and, along with Downy Birch, they cover quite an extensive area. The really good news is that there's masses of young growth coming up beneath them and all around the edges, which is the reason the Dark Bordered Beauty is here; the larvae feed on Aspen suckers. Despite not finding the moth, we did find other Aspen-related things of interest

We found good numbers of the Aspen Bracket Phellinus tremulae on larger Aspen tunks

 

Small Chocolate-tip larva on Aspen, an unexpected lifer for me

The Marsh Snipefly Rhagio tringarius, another lifer for me

These snipeflies were quite commonly encountered beneath the Aspens, though not actually associated directly with them as such. I also noted a few Rhagio lineola on the Aspen leaves, a fly I've previously encountered just a couple of times, here on Skye. I watched one 'sweeping' a leaf with its forelegs, presumably using them to locate food (honeydew perhaps?) which it then bowed forward to imbibe. Facsinating stuff!

We undertook a brief skirmish into a wet area in search of String Sedge. The results were inconclusive, we decided to tackle that particular plant at another site tomorrow. What we did conclusively find were Mountain Pansies, not what I was expecting to find at a lowland site, but The Ghost had insider info that told him we were in a good area for them. Weird. Even more weird was the fact that we walked right past a whole load of them on the way out but didn't notice them until we were heading back to the car park a couple of hours later!

Mountain Pansy - other colours are available

Eventually we quit and headed into Kingussie and our b+b. Our host was Batty Bernie, within the space of two minutes he'd sussed we were lepidopterists (keep taking the medicine, he advised!), told us that Diapensia grew on the local hilltops and that forestry workers are so pissed off being attacked by rogue Capercaillies that they swing chainsaws at them, decapitating the birds in one foul swoop. Ghostie cast me a glance, yep our host for the next two nights was a complete and utter nutter. Still, as long as the breakfast was huge I didn't care. We settled in before heading out for food. I homed in on the Chinese takeaway, damnit but I miss a greasy chow mein with burnt rice. Kingussie did not disappoint, I wolfed my food down with gusto. Hell yeah, this is what the mainland is all about. Uig desperately needs a Chinese takeaway, I may start a petition.