Botanical Notes I

I am a great lover of nature but do not know enough species names. The philosophical question is whether there are always more names to learn so one feels perpetually inadequate, or whether at some stage a degree of mastery can be achieved? I suspect the latter will forever be out of my reach.

Anyhow at this time of year, the wild flowers are out and surely this sub-category of nature must be more tractable? Joyous colours and forms must also surely make identification easier as well as pleasurable?

This afternoon's walk up the Dairy burn in the rain and thunder was at least a start.

I spotted both pink and blue Forget-Me-Not flowers on the same stem! All the other Forget-Me-Nots on my walk, were the standard blue.

Forget-Me-Not (Myosotis scorpioides)

These pink orchids are very different from the purple Marsh Orchids growing in the castle's formal garden:

Common Spotted-orchid (Dactylorhiza fuchsia)

I would call this Scotland's Baby's Breath, but I was finally able to identify the plant as the Marsh Bedstraw:

Common Marsh Bedstraw (Galium palustre)

I was looking at "small buttercups" this afternoon, and speculated that they perhaps were not Buttercups after all. The Seek App told me there were Tormentil.

Tormentil (Potentilla erecta)

And of course, Tormentil have 4 petals and Buttercups have 5. Duh! How had I never noticed this before? I thought I had seen the name Tormentil before in connection with Scotland but I couldn't place it. Was it the name of a ski run or was it the name of a whisky? Anyhow, some frantic googling revealed that there is a Tomintoul (different spelling) whisky and a town of the same name in the Cairngorms.

It goes without saying that you should alert me to any plant mis-identifications in the above!