Lochinver Glebe Wetland re-visited
An article on this interesting site, beside the Glencanisp road just outside Lochinver (NC099223), was posted in November 2021. It contained the observation ‘the bryophyte flora certainly merits further examination’.
An opportunity to do this came on 3rd March 2022, the second day of Gordon Rothero’s spring visit, when we spent some three hours with him taking a closer look at the mire and wooded crags, returning over the top of the ridge to the south.
Mire
We started at the eastern end of the mire, in the boggy lawns (photo 1), around which Gordon found nine species of bog-mosses Sphagnum spp. They included blunt-leaved bog-moss Sphagnum palustre (photo 2) and the recent split, S. medium, of the magellanic bog-moss S. magellanicum. More surprisingly, there were at least two stands of the dainty golden orange plants of the slender cow-horn bog-moss S. subsecundum (photo 3). Gordon has only previously recorded this species four times in Assynt, usually ‘in small mires with run-off from base-rich rocks’.
Crags
We then worked our way down the wooded crags south of the mire. Here we found a tenth species, five-ranked bog-moss S. quinquefarium (photo 4), characteristic of steep banks in rocky woodland.
Drier, overhanging, parts of the rock-faces were covered with sheets of a pale powdery lichen (photo 5). It may well be one called Lepraria lobificans, but this belongs to what has been described as ‘a dust-bin genus’, the species of which are always difficult to identify, often only by using thin-layer chromatography; a job for the professional lichenologist!
Gordon continued ‘browsing’ the bryophyte cover of the crags and boulders (photos 6-7). By the time for lunch, which was taken on very comfortable moss-covered boulders at the western end of the crag, he had accumulated a list of some 55 species of mosses and 25 of liverworts.
Outstanding amongst the latter was a striking species capping a small boulder (photo 8). This was confirmed later as Carrington’s featherwort Plagiochila carringtonii (photo 9). He described it (Flora of Assynt, 2002, p.204) as a ‘distinctive member of the oceanic-montane hepatic community…on rocky north- and east-facing slopes’, usually on our higher hills’. Although it ‘extends down to quite low altitudes’ in the north-west, at 35m above sea level this is the lowest altitude at which it has so far been recorded in the British Isles.
Animal life
During our exploration of the crag, we could hear the distant croaking of spawning frogs in the mire pools, and also the explosive trill of a wren, an old nest of which was later found on a crag (photo 10). The only other birds heard were chaffinch and great tit. On the historical side, we were surprised to find a triangular area of ‘lazybeds’ in an old cultivation area (photo 11), tucked into a drier corner near the western boundary fence of the site (NC098222).
After lunch we moved round onto the south-facing side of the former glebe land. This is a rocky hillside rising to a ridge above the crags we had been exploring. The ridge afforded panoramic views over Loch Culag to the south, and the mire to the north (photo 12). This added a further handful of bryophyte records, with a final tally of 87 species, a goodly number from a comparatively small area and a measure of Gordon’s expertise.
Ian M. Evans and Gwen Richards