During the cool and wet summer, the islands’ native flora creates an extravagant display of wildflowers. The bright and beautiful will always attract attention, but some of the more modest members of the plant kingdom are worthy of attention and offer a fascinating insight into the diversity and complexity of the natural environment.
Everyone has their own favourite spring flowers and dandelions are one of mine. As soon as the first flowers appear on the croft and the roadside verge, I know it is time to start to look for bumblebees and hoverflies.
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
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
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
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
