Captain Bill and Diapensia

Captain Bill and I both had significant birthdays this year within days of this photograph being taken.  We debated who had been dreaming longest of seeing one of Britain's rarest and most fascinating plants - Diapensia lapponica.  I first read the New Naturalist on Mountain Plants when I was a postgraduate student about 38 years ago.  Bill read it when he was a forester in Scotland 40 years ago, so he had waited a little longer than me.  

Our expedition to the mountains near Glenfinnan was to finally catch up with this iconic plant in its one location in Britain.  It was first found high on an otherwise undistinguished mountain by a birder in 1951, who didn't know what it was, but could see it was something different.  The identification was provided by the Kew Herbarium.

Its Scottish location is its most southerly in Europe.  It is a circumpolar species, also found in the high mountains of North America.  It grows on Mount Washington where the highest wind speeds on Earth have been recorded.  Unlike many mountain plants, it doesn't like being buried under snow, and hence its preference for windswept ridges.

With us on our mini-expedition were Simon and Bristly Matt.  Simon provided the expert navigation to pinpoint the location on a mountain massif.  Bristly Matt wasn't born while Bill and I were first dreaming of Diapensia, he did all the driving on the round trip from Cumbria, and he did most of the bird spotting (much of it while driving).

Simon homed in on the plant unerringly.  It has been a cool, late Spring in Scotland and we weren't certain if the plant would be in flower.  We were perhaps a few warm days short of its optimal flowering time, but it had a scatter of flowers.  Once found, its dense reddish leaved cushions were obvious over an area of about 2 ha.  Its habitat is different in appearance to much of what is around, a small rocky plateau with little soil, but not that different to account for its absence elsewhere.  One of those happy botanical mysteries.

In Simon's rucksack was a bottle of fine Champagne, in mine was Mags' birthday cake.  The combination had an interesting effect on all 4 members of the party.

There is a photo of Diapensia in the Extra photos.