Plantlife Scotland is delighted to be supporting High Heels and Horse Hair and their TRANSPLANTED project. Plants and fungi are fundamental to all our lives. Fungi are the great dustbins of the natural world and remove excess plant material. Plants provide oxygen and clean water. What’s more they clothe, feed and shelter us. And they inspire us and calm us. We couldn’t survive with out plants. And ironically, the great diversity of plants and fungi that we are surrounded by i

Bogs – the Cinderella of the natural world. Bogs really do have bad press; they bring up connotations of wasteland, emptiness, squelchy ground, but taking another look at these wet, heathery places can show them in a different light. Bogs, or peatlands to use the politically correct name, can be large, awesome landscapes where nature holds sway. Look at the textures and colours – like a woven fabric draped over the land. Up close see the detail of plants in many shades: br

As summer moves towards autumn, and grassland flowers fade, a second show of colour can be provided by fungi. Among the most colourful are the waxcaps. In permanent pasture that has not been “improved” by the addition of fertilizer or lime these little mushrooms can put on an impressive display. Grassland waxcaps are one example of a diverse and important group of organisms – the fungi. The fungi comprise a Kingdom of life. This means they are one of a handful of fundamental

A Scottish bog in summer can be a haven of calm, as imagined by David Ward in his post for this blog. All too often, however, a still day means the midges are out in force. One little bog plant, the sundew, has turned this situation to its advantage in an unusual way – it has taken to eating insects. Our wet climate means that boggy habitat is well represented in Scotland and of international significance. But the challenge for a bog-dwelling plant is getting enough of the vi

All over Scotland our native plants are having a riotous time this summer. The long spring and summer mean that blooms have been especially fantastic this year creating a perfect welcome for High Heels and Horse Hair’s project, TRANSPLANTED. It doesn’t matter where you go in Scotland, there are always some wild plants to marvel at. On the coast, Scotland’s grasslands are blooming. Our coastal grasslands go through dramatic seasonal colour changes: having succeeded the spring

Scotland has many different orchids from the tiny green Bog Orchid to the Impressive Broad-leaved Helleborine. Particularly along the west coast it is possible to find one with strongly patterned purple flowers and big dark blotches on its leaves. The dark purple pigment is also found in the upper parts of the stem. For a considerable time this was thought to be the same as a Scandinavian plant called Lapland Marsh-orchid, but detailed studies have suggested that these plan

I too have encountered lichens on the hills of Glen Affric. The photograph above shows Ophioparma ventosa, a lichen that I found there about 20 years ago. A synonym of this species is Haematomma ventosum, where the generic part of the name alludes to the blood-red pigment that can be seen in spots on the surface of the crustose lichen. My involvement with the lichen concerned the chemical structure of this pigment, which had been isolated and given the name haemoventosin. A c