Scotland/Cumbria trip, Day 3, 22 June 2018 - Bunloit, Carrbridge, Abernethy & Grantown-on-Spey

This morning we had a date at a location on Speyside with Mich Green so left the Fort Augustus area in time to relocate to Speyside. En-route we stopped at the roadside at Bunloit beside Loch Ness to see the most northerly Sword-leaved Helleborines in the UK. They had gone over as we suspected so we quickly moved on.

Meeting Mich and a few others near Boat of Garten Mich initially tok us to a site she has found near her home in Carrbridge while we waited our 'turn' to be allowed into the private site we had met at. The woods ner Carrbridhe were superb for Coralroot Orchid with big numbers being seen together with planty of Lesser Twayblades and Chickweed Wintergreen.
The site we really wanted to visit was next up and we spent a gloriously entertaining couple of hours at this really special place. c6000 Lesser Butterfly Orchids, c2000 Small White Orchids and c1500 Heath Fragrant Orchids sums how good this private 'garden' is! The real rarity here is Small White x Heath Spotted hybrid, the only one in the UK. Sean and Mike knew exactly where it was which helped. There were also a variety of different Heath Fragrant x Heath Spotted hybrids all of which differed from each other. I found Field Gentian and under the birches were both Common Wintergreen and Intermediate Wintergreen. Alpine Bistort was yet another new plant for me.





Coralroot Orchids


Lesser Twayblades

Chickweed Wintergreen


hybrid Small White x Heath Spotted 






hybrids Heath Fragrant x Heath Spotted

Heath Spotted Orchid


Heath Fragrant Orchid

Alpine Bistort

Common Wintergreen

Intermediate Wintergreen


Small White Orchids



Lesser Butterfly Orchids

A bit further down the road we stopped at 2 different pools in Abernethy. The first one yielded some nice easy Northern Damselflies and the second one a couple of rather less easy White-faced Darters!


Northern Damselflies


 White-faced Darters

To finish the day we visited a site near Grantown-on-Spey which hosts 2 more rare plants gowing under pines - the stunning One-flowered Wintergreen and Twinflower. More Lesser Twayblades were here too.


 Single-flowered Wintergreens

Twinflower


 Lesser Twayblades

     

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