Leaving the mournful song of a mistle thrush behind we began our ascent. Initially it was a forestry track, this soon became the tricky terrain of clear-felled woodland and heather and then we were scrambling up a precipitous scree slope. Our aim was to find and monitor the sexual development of a liverwort known as Athalamia hyalina. It is known from just two sites in Britain and we visited both of them in the same day – not many folk can make such a grand claim even fellow bryologists.
As part of my apprenticeship I am trying to cram in as many bryophytes into my mind as I can. This may be through lab-based identifications, background reading and field excursions with experts. Consequently, I was thrilled to be invited along on the trip to Braemar. What I had not realised was that this rare liverwort grew in such breathtaking locations on friable Dalradian limestone rock ledges. The Cairngorm massif was under heavy snow but where we were searching the weather was fantastic and most of the day was spent in a t-shirt – not bad for mid-March.
Whilst looking for Athalamia hyalina I was encountering so many other species that I had never seen before. This would prove to keep me busy over the next few days in the lab as I reflected on this magical site. In the photograph kindly supplied by my mentor David Long it is the female of the species (although the reproductive structures are not yet at maturity). I never got to see any male material since we were running out of time and since it would have involved descending 200m and then climbing 450m on steep terrain we gave it a miss on this occasion. Incidentally, how my companions were nonchalantly photographing is a mystery to me when I was just concentrating on staying on the slope. This sounds a bit light-weight but then I have only just moved from perhaps the flattest bit of Britain in the Suffolk Broads and probably below sea level for that matter. My hill legs will soon return with a few more excursions like these.
This is just one of the reasons why bryologising in Scotland appeals to me.