NT18: Parsely Pierts - Aphanes disaggregated

For long enough I was oblivious to the existence of the genus Aphanes, despite the fact that, once your eye is in, it'snot that hard to find. Often they're lumped together, with Slender Parsley-piert, A.australis, and Parsley-piert, A.arvensis, aggregated in records. 

Strictly speaking, I believe they ought not to be separated without flowering. However, having now got used to finding Parsley-piert (it especially likes to grow on the base of yellow ant nests) I saw another the other day which struck me immediately as not the same. The colour and the shape were both different. 

According to Poland and Clement's veg key the base of the leaf is different, and so it appears. Also this one was right on the coast in a very small patch of sandy coastal heath. A.arvensis I see on muddy ground on verges and such.

Here are the two specimens side by side.

Parsley Piert (Aphanes arvensis)

dull green patch of A.arvensis

Flat, or even reflexed, leaf base

Slender P-p  (A.australis)

Bright green australis

Unapologetically cuneate leaf base

I feel reasonably confident in recording these two species exactly as separated by Poland and Clement. I'll definitely be trying to look at them later in the year though.

What else could it be but the Foo Fighter's "The Colour and the Shape" (why the UK spelling, I wonder?). 

NT18 - NT1689, Moss Morran

A wander down the west side of Moss Morran today proved fruitful. As well as several expected species of the moss, I found a lovely area of waste ground that I haven't explored much before. 

To my surprise, there is even a road into it that I didn't know existed. 

One of the aims of the NT18 exercise was to fill in gaps in my local knowledge so today certainly did that. This scabby piece of land will undoubtedly produce the kind of nonsense plants that we expect from urban botany, like Senecio inaequidens (Narrow-leaved Rag) and squalidus (Oxford Ragwort). This is the most inland inaequidens I've seen I think, though it's everywhere along the coast. 

S.inaequidens brc atlas (green all mine!)

It might well produce some nice insects, too, so there's no doubt it'll be on my radar for a return visit. I already know that slightly to the north (and therefore out of NT18 - ouch!) is a nice collection of ex-garden monocots.

Here's one of the more expected species of the day - Galium saxatile (Heath Bedstraw), though I can't figure out why I didn't find any Wood Sorrel, which I expected

Anyway, NT18 list now stands at 196 for the year - 43% of my total NT18 species (461) encountered. Pleased enough with that.

Saw these guys in Glasgow with about 30 other people, which is a crying shame. Maybe I should have saved this one for the Giant Hogweed that's just around the corner.

Braefoot

Took a wander round Braefoot area of Dalgety Bay in an extended lunch break. Managed to spy a few new species for the NT18 year, but also confirm that the Pirri-pirri Burr Acaena nova-zelandiae is actually fairly widespread. It must be an early emerger which isn't evergreen, as I would surely have noticed its presence along loads of places that I regularly frequent. The idea that I've missed it in every spot doesn't seem reasonable. Something to go to the books for.

Acaena n-z

Lots of other plants are identifiable right now, although more so when I know what grows where. This isn't immediately obvious as Carex otrubae (False fox-sedge), unless you know where it grows and give the triangular stem a bit of a fondle

More obvious is the likes of Pink Purslane (Claytonia sibirica), which loves the base of trees

and a species I've found in more places than before - Burnet Saxifrage - almost certainly by looking in January when nothing else is green around it

I'm hoping that by getting many of the commoner species out of the way early I can focus my attention on the oddities that occur between them. So far this year in NT18 I've had about 190 species.

(breaking news: Heath Speedwell, Veronica officinalis, Dalgety Bay's 400th flowering plant:

)

Mostly green.

Underwater Love

Took the grapple out to Inverkeithing today and added a few expected plants to the yearlist (terrestrial). However, I also dragged out some waterweed, which proved to be Nuttall's. Fearing that I had actually only ever seen Nuttall's I trawled back through iRecord. Hooray! Cullaloe does seem to have actual E.canadiensis.

Inverkeithing - E.nuttallii, recurved and narrow

Cullaloe - E.canadiensis, straight and fat

(edit: this is Curly Waterweed, Lagarosiphona major)

Branching out into trees

Most people are fairly happy to profess a struggle with grasses and sedges, but I have always had a blind spot for trees. Of course I can spy a horse chestnut or a sycamore or a decent handful of other commoner species. Beyond that, though, I've broadly bodyswerved them. This year it was time for that to change.

Last year in a nice bit of brownfield in the Bay I saw a set of quite attractive larger saplings which presumably have a parent somewhere around the place that had been planted. I had no idea what it was, though, and I didn't push too hard to find out. They like to grow in pavement cracks, apparently.

Yesterday, I decided I'd go and have a look at them. Having acquired Collins tree book - the simpler one in addition to the more comprehensive one I already had - I had browsed through and decided, sort of, that it might be a black poplar, with its pointy, cordate, leaves. I wasn't sure that the leaves were quite right, though, as I remembered them being more cordate than appeared in the pics.

To make a short story long, I ended up with a twig, having decided that they were fairly distinctive, and found that it definitely wasn't a poplar (buds way too blunt/round). It's the first use I've made of the winter twigs book in anger, and I was pretty pleased with its performance, both in keying and confirmatory images. Once I'd sussed it was Italian Alder (Alnus cordata) the other Collins books and google images quickly showed the leaf shape as the one I was familiar with. The species is known as widely planted and is naturalised in other places in Fife.

Hopefully this is the first of many tree discoveries of the year. 

New Year Plant Hunt plus

A couple hours tour of Dalgety Bay this morning turned up about the expected number of flowering plants of about the expected species, though the NYPH site appeared to be glitchy and I'm not sure still has the whole list and photos I tried to supply. 

Daisy

Feverfew

Senecio inaequidens

Red Dead-nettle

Euphorbia helioscopia

Shepherd's Purse

A couple of bonus species I found in places I've walked over 100 times were Pirri-pirri-bur (Acaena novae-zelandiae) and Rock Stonecrop. I had hoped the Acaena might turn out to be two-spined, but it was not to be. Still new to me, though, unless I've botched it and it's really A.anserinifolia... nova-zelandiae is already on the BSBI list, though. All in all a good start to the NT18 500 species challenge

Acaena novae-zelandiae

Recce'n'roll

So in two of the most boring looking squares I have checked a bit of I've found wooded dens! That was a surprise. Even though in one of them the map actually has a green section marked, "the Den" - doh! I still expect urban streets to turn up more diversity but there may be something nice in them.