Scillies Daytrip

I used to live on The Scillies a few years back. It's a place that holds a great many happy (often drunken) memories for me and so, seeing as I was in Cornwall with time to kill, I booked myself a day return ticket on the Scillonian and headed back for a whistle-stop tour of some of the finer plants to be found on St Marys. I had something like five hours ashore, hence very little time to waste. I sketched out a rough plan of attack and boarded the Scillonian III. As soon as she left the quayside, I found myself a spot on the open deck and began scanning for seabirds and cetaceans, all the while fine-tuning my botanical skirmish across Marys. 

The sea wasn't hugely busy with birdlife, a couple of Great Northern and a Red-throated Diver were picked up whilst still in Penzance Bay. Further out it was all about the auks with plenty of Manx Shearwaters to keep me entertained. Amongst the rafts of Guillemots and Razorbills I spied two Puffins, but no skuas or terns were to be seen. And with no seals or cetaceans sightings, mammal interest was restricted to bumping into Spider just as we were pulling into St Marys. Spider was freshly returned from several months swanning around in Kazakhstan, then across to Thailand, Vietnam, back to Kazakhstan and finally back to Ol' Blighty. I've known Spider almost forever and he quickly added me to various Scillonian WhatsApp groups with instructions to "keep in touch, man!"

My general route, with targets, was as follows (species in italics were successfully found):

Garrison - Cineraria, Four-leaved Allseed, Chasmanthe, Annual Buttonweed, Pot Marigold, Aeonium, Pale Dewplant, Scilly Pigmyweed, Giant Herb-Robert, Coprosma, Evergreen Spindle, Babington's Leek, Monterey Cypress, Tomato, New Zealand Flax, Rhodostachys

Hugh Town - Sweet Alison, Scillonian Giant Echium, Snapdragon, Seaside Daisy, two species of Osteospermum, other dewplants

Buzza Hill - Lesser Sea Fig, Wireplant, Silver-bush Everlasting

Tolmans - Tree Aeonium, various iris species, Western Clover, Sea Pea, both Pittosporum, Fennel, Tamarisk, Ake-ake, Red Crassula

Lower Moors - Eels in the ditch and Snipe at the hides, Toothed Fireweed, Intermediate Periwinkle

Rosehill - Kangaroo Fern, House Holly Fern

The Dump - Nasturtium, various galingales, tobaccos and exotic shrubs, German-ivy, Toothed Medick  

In all fairness, given that I've never been to Scillies in April before, I didn't do too badly. Here are a few of the plants from my Garrison Hitlist

Aeonium cuneatum doing its best to look like Triceratops 

Annual Buttonweed as a weed in a flowerbed

Aeonium cuneatum again, I just can't get enough of this incredible plant! 

Giant Herb-Robert. This plant is over five feet wide!

Chasmanthe - looking somewhat like a stately Montbretia

Pale Dewplant at Morning Point. I guess you could say it's doing alright for itself...

Karo Pittosporum crassifolium flower

This is a tremendous showing of Scilly Pigmyweed!

I was absolutely blown away at the number of plants in this colony

And more Chasmanthe. Just coz :) 

I first found Scilly Pigmyweed growing beside the rubbish bins in the Garrison Campsite back in 2016, a patch maybe 12ft by 2ft. At the time they were the first plants known away from the Telegraph area. But the plants shown above were growing a few hundred feet away from that site, along the track that runs between the campsite and the sea cadets hut, and growing for several tens of metres! From memory, there must now be more plants here on the Garrison than occurred at the original colony down by Telegraph. Quite amazing, presumably spread here by camper's boots after they've roamed the island. (Later that day I bumped in to Liz, who is assistant BSBI Plant Recorder for Scillies. I mentioned my find to her and she replied that she bumped into the colony two years ago and almost fell over backwards in shock. Glad it wasn't just me then!) 

Eventually I lifted my eyes from the ground and scanned the football pitch for any migrant birds that may have dropped in. I've had a few good birds on this pitch, Richard's Pipit being a nice self-find here one foggy morning. The first bird I saw was a pristine White Wagtail, followed by three more. Nice! Then I heard a Yellow Wagtail call and looked up to see three birds drop in. A quick look was all that was needed to see that these were Blue-headed Wagtails and not the more expected Yellow Wagtail that breeds in Britain. Oh wow, I had a proper scan and realised there were five of them, all Blue-heads, along with twenty one White Wagtails and a Black Redstart thrown in for good measure. How very bloody marvellous! I reckon it must be six years since I last saw a Yellow Wagtail (of any race) and to be looking at five Blue-headeds together, which also happpens to be the largest flock I've ever seen in Britain, was something of a thrill. But I was on a tight schedule and had places to visit. I sent out a WhatsApp message. Will Wagstaff was on Tresco, in the middle of what he called a wagtailfest. At least 30 Blue-headed, a couple of Ashy-headed and a possible Iberian Wagtail, plus many White Wags too! Jeezo, that's some overnight arrival of continental wagtails. (An hour after I'd left, Spider arrived at the football pitch. No wagtails present, but he did find a Hoopoe ffs!) 

Fleshy Yellow-sorrel is a common sight on walls around Hugh Town

Wireplant is now covering vast swathes of Buzza Hill

The strangely named Silver-bush Everlasting is well naturalised in lanes on St Marys

I was pleased to note that the Lesser Sea Fig in Buzza Quarry is doing very well for itself and has spread quite substantially since I last saw it in 2020. Heading up and over Buzza Hill I wandered through Old Town cemetery before cutting around the bay towards Tolman's Point. 

Bermuda-buttercup. Except it isn't a buttercup and it ain't from Bermuda!

Chilean Iris has escaped from gardens all along the footpath to Tolmans

Deltoid-leaved Dewplant Oscularia deltoides on the rocks at Tolmans

Spring Starflower - the first time I've seen this on Scillies (I've always arrived after it's flowered)

A naturalised Tree Aeonium Aeonium arboreum in full flower

I had been hoping to bump into Aeonium balsamiferum, which has only very recently been realised to occur on The Scillies. Previously it had been misidentified as Tree Aeonium, one of which is in the image above, but sadly balsamiferum seems not to occur in a naturalised state on Marys itself. One for another time. 

Various species I bumped into whilst at Tolmans included Western Clover (not yet in flower), Sea Pea at near enough seedling stage at the top of a beach, Bunch-flowered Daffodils (another early-flowering species new for my Scillies plantlist), Smaller Tree Mallow and both Osteospermum species, but somehow I failed to convince myself that I'd successfully determined Karo, Kohuhu and Ake-ake from each other, in the end I just quit the clump of trees in question and moved on. 

Next up was Lower Moors were I failed to see any Eels in the ditch whilst the margins in front of the hides remained steadfastly free of any Snipe. Shooters Pool had a substantial covering of Water Fern, not a good addition to the Scillies plant list. Quitting the Moors I headed up Rocky Hill Lane towards my next target plant - Kangaroo Fern!

A gorgeous male Speckled Wood of the endemic subspecies insula

Kangaroo Fern slowly smothering the local trees

Kangaroo Fern again

House Holly-fern, a bit of a beast of a plant!

Toothed Fireweed. I think the local WT are trying to eradicate this. Try harder guys.

I was running out of time, Spider kept texting me had I been back up to the Garrison lately? Had I seen the Hoopoe? I just didn't have the time! I scooted through the Dump Clump, not much happening in there, before arriving at the Dump itself. Acres of Nasturtium covered the mound and I could see the odd Rhodostachys and Cordyline Palm sprouting up amongst the various unidentifiable shrubs and bushes. A Cetti's Warbler burst into song, I recall Ren's young daughter running up to me back in 2016, telling me to "hurry up coz daddy has just found a Cetti's Warbler", so I guess they're a bit more regular nowadays. Either that or I should have put it out on the WhatsApp group, oops.  

Hand made lobster pots. He started this in the morning and would be finished soon!

A mostly hidden but self-sown Cordyline Palm on top of the dump mound

And so ended my daytrip to The Scillies. I made it back to the boat in good time (which means I was sweating like a beast as I marched ever closer, constantly checking the time as I went). Nothing of note from the return crossing and I booked myself a room in Penzance itself, talk about a mission trying to find a parking space in the backstreets! Tomorrow I was meeting up with The Pirate, fun and games guaranteed. And probably just a smidge of alcohol too.

St Agnes as viewed from the top of Garrison Hill