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U3A botany Group at Orkney College on Tuesday 2 September
by Merryn Dineley - 12:35 on 19 September 2025
Hello everyone,
It's been rather a busy time for me recently, and so I do apologise for being late with this report and photos from the last meeting of theyear. There was some confusion about the identification of one or two of the plants and so a few emails have been exchanged with John (many thanks) to sort this out. I hope I've got the corrections all correct!
We will meet again, as a group, in May next year. The planning meeting for next year's botanical walks will be in April, 2026. The venue is yet to be decided, but probably we will meet at the Finstown Community Centre again.
So, here we go, with the botanical report from John and photos of some of the plants that we saw.Thanks Ian, Kate and John for photographs.
Smooth Hawkbit
Wild Pansy
Hybrid Pansy
Field Pansy
Our final meeting of the year was at Orkney College (thanks to CliveChaddock and the management), with the main aim of looking at weeds of cultivation. 17 of us gathered. John Crossley was leader for the afternoon.
First stop was the greenhouse area. Many years of horticulture cannotfail to import some unwanted guests, and we immediately spotted one – Petty Spurge (_Euphorbia peplus_), one of several in the Spurge family and a rare weed in Orkney. We paused to look at Smooth Hawkbit (_Crepis biennis_) in flower, also at a form of Common Ragwort (_Jacobaea
vulgaris)_ without the usual ray florets around the perimeter of the flower. However, the main menu called and we went out into the stubble field at the back of the College in search of ‘weeds’, in hot sunshine.
Remnants of the harvested cereal crop, Bere, could be seen among the stubble stalks. It had been harvested in early August and the intervening weeks had given time for opportunist annuals to grow quickly and flower. At once we saw some beautiful Wild Pansy (_Viola tricolor_), a plant that persists in Orkney though becoming uncommon elsewhere in
Britain, and next to it the smaller and creamy-white Field Pansy (_Viola arvensis_), a much less common species in Orkney. Nearby was a Speedwell with small blue flowers creeping along the ground, much trickier to identify as there are several annual Speedwells which look much alike; this one was Common Field-speedwell (_Veronica persica)_, best identified by the shape of its fruits. With it was another, the tiny but upright Wall Speedwell (_V. arvensis_). A Forget-me-not was fairly frequent among the stubble: they are another quite difficult group, but
in this habitat none other than Field Forget-me-not (_Myosotis arvensis_) was likely, and so it proved. Two others were Knotgrass (_Polygonum aviculare_) and Redshank (_Persicaria maculosa_).
We headed for a small patch of unharvested crop in the middle of the field, which proved to comprise Rye, Triticale (hybrid between Wheat and Rye) and _Phacelia_, these being some of the trials conducted by the Agronomy Institute. Wild Oat (_Avena fatua_) was growing among them. Here we were met by Henry Criessen, director of the Institute, who told us something of the experiments being carried out, especially cover crops. He explained how these could prevent soil nutrient depletion outside the summer growing season and at the same time fit with a change in farming subsidies; these meant that in future farmers would have to devote a percentage of their arable land to ‘greening’ measures – which would include the option of cover crops. An interesting question and answer session followed before we returned to our weeds.
These included a colourful fumitory, Common Ramping-fumitory (_Fumaria muralis_) one of the larger-flowered of the six species to be found in Orkney, though this particular plant was a bit unimpressive due to the late season, and plentiful Corn Spurrey (_Spergula arvensis_). Then some excitement, as the rarely recorded hybrid between the two pansies seen
earlier was spotted; it’s a difficult one to identify, but not this time as there were plants bearing both small creamy-white and larger violet-coloured flowers on the same plant. That was about it, except for some bumblebee spotting on an agricultural vetch, possibly Winter Vetch
(_Vicia villosa_)".
John
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