Flora

Berneray freshwater loch

Life in Freshwater

Lochs, lochans, peaty pools and ephemeral winter ponds are all familiar and characteristic features of our landscape. The 6,000 lochs and 1,375 stream systems together with the water held in our spongy peatbogs and its pools, combine to create a very high ratio of freshwater to land mass in the islands. We might stop to […]

Wheatear

Signs of Spring survey 2020

Back in January a few of us involved in Curracag and the Outer Hebrides Biological Recording group decided to launch a phenology survey we ended up calling Signs of Spring. Phenology is the study of when things happen and for centuries people have systematically recorded when certain natural events occur. Perhaps the most famous phenologist

Teasel (Dipsacus fullonum)

Another carnivorous plant in the Outer Hebrides?

I enjoyed reading the recent summary of insectivorous plants in the Outer Hebrides and was reminded of it whilst taking part in my ritual but futile summer Horsetail pulling. Like many, my garden is riddled with horsetail and we have an uneasy truce. It grows, I pull it up, it grows, I pull and so

Drosera anglica

Bladderworts, Butterworts and Sundews

I like to think as insectivorous plants as a perverse, natural revenge by plants on the animal kingdom. The prey has become the predator as they have evolved the ability to lure, trap and digest insects. This facility to acquire additional nutrients enables them to grow in habitats with poor soils such as wetland heaths

Daffodil shoots late December 2019

Spring – as if to tease us ….

As if to tease us, indications of better things to come arrived just as daylight hours reached their minimum. The first tentative daffodil shoots appeared amongst the rapidly dwindling Calendulas in the garden and deep in the hedge a Song Thrush started to sing. Knowing that the worst of winter is still to come I

A story in a single photograph – dandelion pollination

A close-up photograph of a dandelion flower reveals the strange strategy of dandelion pollination. Each “flower” is actually a composite of hundreds of individual flowers.  Each has a single petal but its own set of male and female parts and produces its own nectar and pollen.  Early flowering dandelions are a magnet for early flying

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