Grass in the Highlands (1 Viewer)

[GeorgeMac]

Mr Google tells me it is grass and shows me visually similar images of mowed lawns. Big Brother Google Earth still has a long way to go before he is anywhere near ready to run the world.

 

[Xenospiza]

It's an Equisetum (Horsetail), but I cannot see which species from this picture.
The size of the channel in the stem is an important feature.

 

[GeorgeMac]

Horsetail is excellent Xenospiza, thanks very much. I've just learned it's a fern, not a grass.

 

[delia todd]

.... very pretty, but a nightmare if you get it in the garden!!

 

[GeorgeMac]

Good advice delia

 

[Nutcracker]

Great Horsetail Equisetum telmateia :t:


Needs wet ground, very unlikely to be a problem in a garden - it's only E. arvense (Field Horsetail) that's a problem.

 

[GeorgeMac]

:t:

 

[Xenospiza]

I don't know which "Highlands" are meant here, but Great Horsetail is notably absent from the Scottish ones:
https://database.bsbi.org/maps/?taxonid=2cd4p9h.4k3

 

[Nutcracker]

I don't know which "Highlands" are meant here, but Great Horsetail is notably absent from the Scottish ones:
https://database.bsbi.org/maps/?taxonid=2cd4p9h.4k3

In which case, report this as a new location, because it definitely is it - readily distinguished by the pale internodes with black leaf whorls at the nodes, and the number of leaf teeth in the whorls :t:

 

[GeorgeMac]

Yes, this is up north of Inverness. I'll go take a few more photos today and post the location. I've never seen this fern before.

 

[GeorgeMac]

Here we go, a map where it's growing and 2 more photos of the horsetail. It is growing along a wet ditch beside the road and it looks as if the seeds are being washed along the ditch as it has spread along the banks of the ditch for about 50 yards or so. Perhaps a migratory bird deposited the original seeds or something. I haven't seen it anywhere else.

 

[Xenospiza]

Fate in the BSBI maps restored: it is known from Brora!

It is spread by spores, not by seeds.