Heath Dog Violet at Lough Allua, West Cork.

Heath Dog Violet (Viola canina)

15th May 2015

South Shore, Lough Allua, West Cork, Ireland

Despite many hours searching Newmarket Heath I failed to find any Heath Dog Violets. They have decreased in numbers to the point where they are  gone from Cambridgeshire. Newmarket Heath was the last stronghold with many plants present twenty years ago but more recently just a few plants have been found on occasional years.

Not only rare, they are also quite hard to distinguish from the Common Dog Violet. 

This is complicated by two sub-species which give Heath Dog Violet varied features plus the ever present complications of hybrids with both Common (Viola riviniana) and Pale Dog Violet ( Viola lactea) .

Given the difficulty and variation this small group on the South Shore seems to fit with Heath Dog Violet. They were growing in the short grass about a meter in from the waters edge. Sepal appendages were large, even larger than Common Dog Violet and the spur colour was pale yellow-greenish without any violet tinge. Common Dog can have completely white spurs but the greenish tinge looks good for Heath.
Leaf shape also looked good with leaf base more squared off with less of the heart shaped base that Common Dog Violet would normally have.

Irish St.John's Wort

 Irish St. John's Wort (Hypericum canadense)

Glengarriff, West Cork.   8th July 2014

I went searching for this rare plant since we were
 passing through Glengarriff while on holiday.
 It is unusual, in that it is an American plant widely
 distributed across the eastern half of Canada and the
USA.; but only found wild in two areas of Ireland.
A few locations in Europe have been found and put down to movement of  American military in the World Wars.
 More recently another site has been found in Northern England..

It was originally found in 1954 by the notable botanist,
 D.A Webb around Lough Mask in County Mayo at
 several sites. This created quite a bit of interest and
 in 1970 a visiting couple of botanist , Mr and Mrs
 Butcher found a site in Glengarriff, County Cork.

Webb and Halliday  visited the Glengarriff site in
 August 1973 and found six stations all within a 1km
 of the town.

 The story was written up in Watsonia and
from this I got directions to re-visit the site

found by the Butchers. The hillside has changed
since the early 70's with additional houses
and a deterioration of the small fields no longer being
farmed. However walking up the track we came across an wet flush area which held several
100 plants in flower.

A second site was found later that afternoon just
to the East, but both sites are being invaded
by Rhododendron and it is possible that within just a few years these sites will be lost. I pulled up a few small Rhododendron as a token effort  at control.

There is still controversy about whether Irish
St.John's Wort is a native of Ireland as argued
by D.A.Webb but to date the only sites remain
Lough Mask and Glengarriff . I find this
surprising,  if really native. There is a parallel
on the West Coast of the USA where it has also
been found, but in America these remote sites
are not treated as native.

 Ref: Wildflowers of Cork City and County.
by Tony O'Mahony The Collins Press

Lizard Orchid

Lizard Orchid

Himantoglossum hircinum

Devils Ditch

14th June 2014

Purple Milk Vetch

Purple Milk Vetch.
Astragalus danicus
Newmarket Heath
1st June 2014