With DM reporting that the first daffodils are in flower in Devon while our daffodils haven't yet dared to show a green shoot above ground, we set off into the woods around Dunrobin castle to see what we could find in the way of spring flowers, and were thrilled when we found....
Okay, okay, so it's not a flower but the fungus' spectacularly cheerful colour is a wonderful pick-me-up in the dismal grey winter weather we're currently enjoying.
Not that all was good news. There are five elf cup sites in Dunrobin woods and we visited three, of which one didn't have a single flower, another had four, and our best site, which in previous years had thirty or more....
Happily, when we visited the site with four elf cup flowers we stumbled across something we hadn't been expecting yet....
The mosses are also looking good in the grounds of Dunrobin. Did you know there are ~767 species of moss, ~298 species of liverwort and 4 species of hornwort in the UK? (thank you Google). This is not an area I have studdied and was stunned by these figures.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the statistics, Derryck, which are mind-boggling. I never cease to be amazed at the variety Nature creates but one would need several lifetimes to appreciate them all.
DeleteSome of the mosses are a stunning green, the sort of green one associates with fields in Ireland. The camera can't capture the colour.