The snow showers continued into the first week of February
but with a sunny +80C on the 9th and an even better +140C
on the 18th, much of the low-ground snow had disappeared by the end
of the month. Perhaps the lack of heavy
snow showers early in the month fooled my brain into thinking conditions in the
countryside were getting better and an outing on 6th to one of my
aspen mapping
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| Early cyclamens |
sites near Grantown ended up with the words “horror day out” in
my diary as the whole visit was carried out in wellie deep snow! Not nice.
Despite the snow a small group of cyclamen plants in a garden in the
village popped their purple heads up above the snow giving the slightest hint
that spring was on its way. Our faithful
great spotted woodpecker was heard drumming from its usual tree on 5th
and with blackbirds in sub-song and robins clearing their throats around the
same date at least the birds were hinting at better days to come.
To celebrate my beard’s fiftieth birthday on 2nd
we headed once again to the green and snowless countryside around Nairn for the
day. The leaves of lesser celandine were
starting to appear in the woods by the River Nairn and the pointy heads of
butterbur were showing enough to give a hint of the eruption of white
flower-heads that would occur within a week or two. In the woods close to an
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| Winter aconites |
ex-“estate-house”
the woodland floor was a mass of yellow and white with winter aconites
flowering in profusion in amongst carpets of snowdrops. A meeting with Ron re the book mentioned in
the last blog a few days later left a few queries to follow up mainly linked to
the past history of Abernethy Forest.
The brilliant websites linked to old maps of the area helped sort many
of the place-name queries, but the route of the old “puggy railway” used to
extract timber from the forest failed to turn up on any of them. Thankfully, the location of the track-bed is
still visible in some parts of the forest and during past bog restoration work even
a short section of railway line was found.
Quite a bit of time was spent discussing how some of the timber produced
in the forest was used, particularly Scots pines in the forest infected by
resin-top fungus (Peridermium pini or Cronartium flaccidum). Over
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| 2nd oldest tree currently known in Abernethy Forest |
many years this fungus allows sap to
rise but not to fall in the autumn and eventually a distinctive area of
curled/hard bark develops towards the top of the tree where the heart wood and
sap wood becomes solid with resin. This
resin blockage eventually kills the tree.
In modern times folk living close to the forest knew of these trees and
the logs cut from the resin rich section were chopped up being highly valued as
“rosit/roset” kindlers for lighting the fire!
Ron had found that a couple of hundred years ago folk travelled to the
forest to collect these sections of resin filled tree which they cut into tiny
slivers probably 1-2 cm square, and were lit like candles to light their
homes. These slivers were known as
fir-candles (not fork-handles!) and special adjustable holders were made so the
candle could be swivelled round to provide the best light location in the old
black houses. Ancient Scots pines were
also discussed with Ron mentioning that a few had been found in Abernethy with
letters or initials carved into them as though “claimed” by a local as their
tree possibly to provide fir-candles or firewood. One tree mentioned was classed as the second
oldest Abernethy tree, dated by coring, to 1640, and that this tree had the
letter “B” inscribed in one of a couple of axe “attacks” on the tree. Worth visiting suggested Ron and as we said
cheerio I headed off up the road to meet this ancient being with axe marks and
letters. The lack of snow in Nethybridge
stopped my brain from working, completely forgetting that the dusting we had
had the day before would possibly be several inches higher up in the
forest. Thankfully, the wee Fiesta was
up to the task, and with a bit of Hannu Mikkola steering I reached the parking
spot ready for my trek to THE tree. Interestingly,
the Scots pine, despite its large stature, didn’t look that different to other
big old pines encountered in Abernethy and particularly
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| Axe marks in Scots pine |
Rothiemurchus forest so
it would be interesting to age a few more by coring. However, it did have the extra bit of
“history” and I was interested to see the various marks reported by Ron. The axe marks, found in two places, were
certainly old, and over the years the annual growth outwards had left the axe
marks well embedded in the tree, so we weren’t looking at modern axe
wounds. The marks, one very large and
one quite small had obviously not caused the tree too much stress and apart
from a couple of large branched which looked like they had been detached during
heavy snow, the tree seemed in not bad health for its age at 375 years. The tree might be a little older because when
the tree was cored to find its age, the centre of the tree had decayed so it
could be as old as 400. There are records
of Scots pines living for up to 600 years in Sweden. On the edge of one of the axed areas the
letter B could be seen and had been stamped three times, not cut by hand but
created by
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| Letter B stamped on tree |
some well-made hardened metal punch, creating letters about
three-quarters of an inch tall.
Information from a Swedish expert who had visited the tree suggested it
had also been burnt, though evidence of burn-marks had long gone. It is known that pines that suffer fire
damage also become rich in resin so whether the axe marks were created by
someone taking slivers of resin-rich wood away for candles or kindlers and
marking the tree to claim ownership, we can only guess. Whatever, it was nice to meet up with such an
old tree which was also probably the source of seed for the trees in the
surrounding forest.
News of the success of the BSBI and CNPA botanical survey
during summer 2014 had also reached BBC Scotland and I was asked to do an
interview for the “Out of Doors” programme.
The first question though was “will there be any flowers to see?” and,
knowing there is always something to see, I said I would check the general area
close to the Osprey Centre car park, where one of only two patches of
twinflower were found during the survey.
Two interesting plants with evergreen leaves were found, common
wintergreen and creeping lady’s tresses along with all the usual plants of the
forest floor like cowberry, heather and blaeberry with just a hint of new
leaves appearing. Gales and sleet on the
day had me worried about a call-off, but Mark Stevens, the presenter appeared
on time,
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| The distinctive Colpoma quercinum fungus on dead oak twig |
and after a quick interview talking about the wintergreen and a bit
about how the surveys were planned and walked he said he thought he had enough
and within about 45 minutes everything was done and dusted – and we didn’t even
leave the car park. On the following
Saturday a few folk said they had heard me on the radio and once I caught up
with the broadcast it appeared that the one-off take was used in full and
followed up with some complimentary studio chat by Mark hinting that “that man
can talk for Britain on conservation”.
Phew, he’ll be wanting to pay me next!
With the interview over quite quickly I had time to just pop down the
road to Loch Pityoulish to check out the ancient oaks for something that was
being discussed in the last edition of Field Mycology (Vol 16 (1)), a wee
fungus, Colpoma quercinum, which grows on dead twigs attached to live branches with
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| Section through Colpoma fungus |
the whole still attached to the tree.
There are less than 500 UK records and the ones local to the Cairngorms
National Park were from 1912 (x2) and 1991 (x1). The article talked about folk who knew the
fungus would walk into say Windsor Great Park and almost find it on the first
tree, so once again it looked like we were talking about a lack of boots on the
ground looking rather than the fungus being rare. Finding low branches for twigs to check
proved the more difficult part of the search but eventually some dead twigs
were found with what looked like the characteristic “slit” with dark innards, and
a couple retained to see if I could find the spores to confirm the
species. The twigs had both open slits
and “lumps” which had yet to open and between the two sources I was able to
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| Colpoma quercinum spores |
find the spores and a quick email to Martyn (the Windsor Great Park finder)
confirmed that I was onto the right species.
That was the easy bit. The
article then went on to say that there were even fewer records of a corticioid
fungus known as Marchandiomyces (=Corticium) quercinus which is parasitic on
the first species and the carrot being dangled (once again) was that there are
no records from Scotland. So, all I need
in the second half of March, is a bit of rain and another visit to our local
oak trees, of which we have just a few.
I’ll let you know how we get on.
The aspen mapping work continued through February with
another five map areas visited and checked.
A couple of the maps with lots of red polygons to check provided few
aspen locations, one area being mainly alder tree locations and the other
around Coylumbridge mainly dead Scots pines,
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| Lobaria scrobiculata |
both trees looking like aspens
when the area was flown and photographed.
However, the other three map areas produced both ancient aspens and
brilliant lichen communities. The first
was the “horror” site mentioned at the start of the blog where the whole visit
was undertaken in conditions of deep snow where one of the trees had good
populations of lungwort (Lobaria pulmonaria) and the textured lungwort (L.
scrobiculata). Tracks in the snow showed
that there was just me, roe deer and the odd
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| Mystery slide marks in snow |
fox wandering around in less than
ideal conditions. On one steep slope a
set of marks spied from a distance of possibly something sliding down the
slope, had me scratching my head so I wandered over to have a look as to what
might have caused them. I have heard of
otters sliding down snow covered slopes and that is what might have been
responsible here, but I couldn’t find any evidence of tracks of the creator by
the marks or directly attached to the end of the slide marks. Rabbits were seen on the slope but the marks
didn’t seem right for them. The other
thing I thought about was the possibility of a naturally rolling snow-ball,
gathering snow as it rolled, but the neat, slightly rounded depression was too
even along its length for this to be the cause.
As I had been walking across the steep sections of snow covered slope I
had been dislodging lumps of snow which took off under their
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| One of the ancient Newtonmore aspens |
own weight,
rolling down the slope and gathering snow as they rolled. Some of these “wheel shaped balls” had
increased in size to a couple of feet in diameter by the time they came to a
halt, but the indent they left in the snow didn’t match what I was seeing in
front of me. Another of life’s wee
mysteries. Top of the list for ancient
aspens, lichens and the odd moss was the next map square to the one already
visited (in January) close to the Newtonmore Riding School. Almost every tree had populations of the textured
lungwort, unusual for round here, along with the lichens Pannaria conoplea,
Fuscopannaria mediterranea, Collema furfuraceum and the wee moss Zygodon
conoideus only identified by a lucky find of a single distinctive gemma when
trying to identify the moss by its
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| Zygodon conoideus leaf under microscope |
leaf size and cell make up via the
microscope. Gemmae (plural) are found in
many mosses and provides a means of “asexual” reproduction meaning it is able
to produce offspring in the absence of a mate or by cross-fertilisation. This means that the offspring are clones of
the parent plant. Checking more leaves
produced more club-shaped gemmae, and the identification eventually came down
to how many divisions there were (cells) within each gemma, which in my case
was 7-8. The identification was finally
confirmed by contacting expert bryologist Gordon, a necessary final step as
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| Zygodon conoideus gemma |
the
moss appeared to be new to the Cairngorms National Park area. Two very odd things happen during this
visit. With so many ancient trees I
thought it a little odd that I hadn’t seen any flaky freckle pelt lichen
(Peltigera britannica) and it turned up on the next tree visited. Right at the end of my visit it dawned on me
that, unusually for me, I hadn’t found any of my favourite pinhead lichen
Sclerophora pallida. The next old birch
tree I encountered had a patch of dark bark where there had been a sap-run –
one of the pinheads favoured habitats – and sure enough, there it was! Spooky. The
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| The amazing fallen but live aspen |
last aspen site was on the River
Dulnain near Carrbridge where again many aspens has small populations of the textured
lungwort, and others with the lichens flaky freckle pelt, lungwort, textured
lungwort and Degelia plumbea, the latter growing on perhaps the most amazing
fallen, but live aspen I’ve ever seen.
Despite being on its side new stems had grown from the top of the
root-plate and many of the stems of the fallen tree had continued to grow,
effectively turning one tree into many.
This part of the woodland also had an amazing amount of natural aspen
regrowth, suckers developing from the underground aspen roots of the mature
trees.
My copy of Field Mycology which arrived in early February
and mentioned briefly above, was quite special to me as, within its pages, was
the end product of something that started back on 13th April 2013. That was the day I encountered tiny black
dots on the leaves of a patch of twinflower (Linnaea borealis) and then covered
over the months in earlier blogs. The
black dots turned out to be the
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| Twinflower (Linnaea borealis) |
micro-fungus Metacoleroa dickiei and led to me
visiting 19 different twinflower populations, local to home and into
Morayshire, to see how often the fungus occurred on the plants leaves. It was found at 14 of the sites. What was also turning up was a second, much
smaller fungus which initially was named as Sphaerulina leightonii but, due to
the diligence and perseverance of Martyn Ainsworth at Kew, this fungus was
eventually named as Ceramothyrium linnaeae, a fungus never recorded in Britain
before. One find I made via the Firwood
microscope which I called my “Angel of the North” (see blog July 2014) helped a
little with this process and let Martyn know he was on the right track when
discounting S. leightonii. In late 2013
myself and Martyn had written the first draft of a paper
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| Septoria linnaeae on twinflower leaves |
covering our finds (including
finding a third micro-fungus Septoria linnaeae on the twinflower leaves) but
still at a time when we had, unknowingly, the “wrong” fungus identified! As Martyn’s doubts rose the paper was put on
hold and, with plenty of twinflower leaves to work with, the new species
started to emerge. More work was
undertaken at Kew by Martyn and Paul Cannon and by autumn 2014 new drafts of
our paper started to circulate and the final draft went to the editors of Field
Mycology for inclusion in Volume 16 in January 2015. My copy arrived, complete with the
twinflower
paper, a great honour for me particularly when a joint author with two
well-known figures in the world of mycology.
I did the leg work and made the initial finds but without the huge
amount of work initially undertaken by Martyn with later technical input from
Paul, the paper wouldn’t have made it to print.
I can but thank them both for their help. However, out there somewhere, is another
species found by the Rev. William Allport Leighton in August 1837 on twinflower
leaves in Glen Doll. To be concluded.
That’s it for another month, enjoy the read
Stewart and Janet
Scottish Black House information
Tree coring
NBN
Highland Biological Recording Group
and how to join HBRG
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| One of many "wildcat trail" cats found hiding behind an aspen! |
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| More feral goats at Newtonmore |
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| Hint of spring - the first oystercatchers |
Photos © Stewart Taylor
