Nature Notes from Argyll
(and occasionally other places)

Tue 16 Feb 2010 Ballachulish

Was shown brilliant place for lichens by Catherine MacLeod.  Extremely cold day, eventually started snowing, forcing us to take refuge in the excellent Ballachulish TIC and have double bacon with double egg on toast.  But not before we had seen a superb rosette of the Flute Lichen, Menegazzia Terebrata, on alder, and Protopannaria pezizoides, looking like a squamulose version of the familiar Pannaria rubiginosa, on a mossy dry stone wall.
 

On the same wall, this Peltigera hymenina didn't look quite as garish as in the photo, but it did have green areas and purple patches which the sunshine has intensified.  The wall had an incredible variety of lichens including the stalked fruitbodies of Baeomyces rufus, in the RH pic.
 

This frilly Cladonia caught the eye but has proved tricky to identify.  The odd bare stone surface between all the mosses and leafy lichens had crustose species such as this Porpidia macrocarpa.
 

One fencepost nearby was absolutely covered in the red matchstick lichen Cladonia polydactyla; this is just a small section of it.

In a nearby area of forestry, several Spruce trees were covered in this white fungus, which had rotted, or taken advantage of existing rot in, the wood, which in turn was pierced by these holes, probably made by birds pecking for insects in the rot.  I have not been able to identify the fungus.  There are more photos of it here which I posted to a fungus forum, but apparently these "whitewash fungi" are very difficult.
 

Pap of Glencoe and and Sgorr nam Fiannaidh from Ballachulish.  Shortly after this, we too were covered in snow.
 

All photos and other content copyright © Carl Farmer