Wim 🅾 @wim_v12e@octodon.social

OK, time for something a bit more obvious: Scottish heather.

I love the Wikipedia quote:

"Heather is seen as iconic of Scotland, where the plant grows widely. When poems like Bonnie Auld Scotland speak of "fragrant hills of purple heather', when the hero of Kidnapped flees through the heather, when heather and Scotland are linked in the same sentence, the heather talked about is Calluna vulgaris."

#photography #mastoart

Fun fact about Lady's Mantle: the official name is Alchemilla, from a medieval Latin diminutive of alchimia ‘alchemy’, from the belief that dew from the leaves of the plant could turn base metals into gold.
(https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Alchemilla)

The Scots pine is definitely one of my favourite trees. Rothiemurchus forest is one of the few sites where they still grow as a forest. What is really cool is that these trees here are directly descended from the first pines to arrive in Scotland following the ice age, 9,000 years ago.
I think they're magnificent trees.
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Wild thyme and Alpine lady's-mantle.
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Even unripe cherries can make a nice subject for a picture. You can imagine the blossoms from a few months ago.
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This is sundew (drosera), a little carnivorous plant. In this time of the year it was quite abundant in Glen Einich, although I had not noticed it before.
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This is a wild rose, and because it 's summer in Scotland there are raindrops on it.
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This is the time of the year that orchids are in bloom in the Scottish glens.
I'm not an expert at all, but I found a guide that says the left is a heath spotted orchid and the right is a hybrid of that and the northern marsh orchid.
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A walk in the beautiful Cairngorm valley called Glen Einich. For a long time Loch Einich at the end of this glen provided the drinking water for the Aviemore area. The pictures are not very vibrant because it was raining :)
#photography #mastoart