Of Ostriches and Men

We've had numerous bouts of intense hail over the past few days, some so hard that I (almost) felt a little bit sorry for the marauding flocks of woolly maggots roaming the nearby hillsides. This afternoon the sun came out and so I gleefully threw down my paintbrush and roller and headed out for some fun. I have another two weeks until I'm back on a fixed rota, these opportunities for escape won't be around very much longer. 

I stayed local, just nipping across to Dunvegan Woods for a quick wander. Lots of groundwater running down the roadsides. I contemplated donning wellies but decided to stick with my boots and struck off into the trees. Too chilly for any dipteran activity, but a further suite of plants have started to emerge and it didn't take long to find my first Meadowsweet of the year popping up amongst the ubiquitous Broad-leaved Dock, Bluebell and Water Avens leaves.  

There are several acres of Salmonberry thickets along the road verges at Dunvegan Woods and many were coming into flower. All pretty battered, to be fair, presumably by the hailstorms I mentioned. Here's one that made me look twice, note the anthers are brown instead of pale coloured. 

Original and cropped versions of the same image

I expect I would have missed this if all of the petals were intact. I'm not at all certain but I think this could be the fungus Hapalosphaeria deformans. It's a very common fungus on bramble flowers (ie the same genus as Salmonberry) but I can't find reference to it on Rubus spectabilis. I ought to have taken it back for microscopy. One for tomorrow, perhaps. 

A typically drooping flowerhead of Salmonberry

Note the clean and pale anthers in this uninfected flowerhead

But it wasn't the Salmonberry that I was here to see, I was here for Ostrich Fern. For the past couple of weeks I've been staring forlornly at a patch of woodland floor, waiting for the first signs of greenery erupting from last year's dead crowns. Today my wait ended and I was very pleased to see a good number of freshly emerged croziers sprouting across the entire patch and, indeed, a couple that seemed to be in a new area. This Ostrich Fern colony was first recorded here in the autumn of 1976, it would be nice to think they may have extended their range by a further ten feet in the four years that I've known them. Happy 50 years old, by the way!

The utterly fabulous Ostrich Fern Matteuccia struthiopteris

I found a patch of these in Grantown-on-Spey a couple of weeks back, only the second site in that VC (record now accepted) but that was just the fertile spikes left over from last year. It's the croziers that I love so much. They are still a bit small at the moment, maybe 20cm at the most, but once they are over two feet in height they really do resemble a snake's head. I shall undoubtedly take more pics nearer the time to show you! Then, once the fronds unfurl, they form a beautiful shuttlecock of the most amazing pale green, a totally different shade of green from any of the surrounding ferns. Again, I'll take pics to show you. 

I did a little online research this evening and discovered two interesting facts that I didn't know about Ostrich Fern. Firstly, the very young croziers are edible (though you need to strip away any brown scales) and are a delicious asparagus/nutty flavour after being boiled for 10-15 minutes. Apparently. Much more importantly though, there's an associated fungus that grows on the dead parts which is entirely host-specific to Ostrich Fern. It's called Woldmaria filicina and there are four records of it on the NBN Atlas. It's very distinctive looking too, I'm definitely going to check closely next time I'm here. If you have any Ostrich Fern near you, maybe go see if you can find the fungus. Failing that, you'll definitely have Hapalosphaeria deformans infecting a bramble flower near you this summer.

Edit: no sign of Woldmaria during a check the following day. Hey ho. 

As mentioned when I found the Grantown plants, Ostrich Fern is my favourite fern after Holly-fern (which is amaaaazing...) The only other record of Ostrich Fern in this VC relates to some well-established plants in the corner of Raasay House's walled garden that were first noticed by a botanist in 1994. They're still there, apparently. Long live the Ostrich!