Defying Death for a Flower - Cicerbita alpina, Glen Doll

Glen Doll - pastel sketch on paper

Early nineteenth century botanists were seemingly very good at it, and that was defying death for a flower. The race to find specimens of the world's rarest flowers matched the fervour to fill zoological gardens with birds and animals from the very ends of the earth. Early botanists scaled dangerous cliffs and treacherous gullies to search for Scotland's rarest plants only to pull them out by the roots for their own or museum collections. One plant in particular suffered badly at the hands of these early collectors. Cicerbita alpina, commonly called Alpine Sow-thistle, was a favourite victim because it tended to grow on inaccessible mountain ledges and that created an attractive challenge to the botanical pioneers. The most famous one was George Don (1764-1814) from Forfar, who would carry a fifteen foot long, hooked pole into the mountains to retrieve the plants and he was the first to record Cicerbita alpina on Lochnagar in 1801. I admit to sharing in their enthusiasm to discover this extremely rare plant and take risks to achieve that today, but leave my trusty pole at home. 

Sketching today in Glen Doll

Amongst botanists Glen Doll and Corrie Fee are synonymous with rare alpine plants but to climbers these places are the stuff of nightmares. Slimy, lichen covered rock, ledges that ooze wet peat held together by straggly roots and gullies that are loose, squidgy and very slippery make the cliffs here deadly. I learned to climb on this stuff and it has held me in good stead over many years of climbing throughout Scotland and the Alps, yet I have the ultimate respect for it as these vegetated crags can be the most risky of things to ascend or indeed descend. 

The gully where Alpine Sow-thistle grows has a listing with the Scottish Mountaineering Club and in summertime is graded 'moderate' in difficulty, whilst in winter condition it gets a grade two. I had climbed this gully previously, initially in summer when I was sixteen years old and a few times since in winter, under snow and ice conditions. Now, I remember vowing never to go back to that place ever again at that tender age and it has taken me forty one years to forget it. The experience was re-kindled today, as if I had stepped back in time, as I looked at the greasy, moss covered rock pitch below the overhanging chock-stone which bars progress up the gully bed. 

Elation tingled in my mind, because just above the pitch and out of reach were some flowering stems of the thistle. Yes, and a life long curiosity to see this rare plant flowering naturally in Scotland is achieved.

To touch the stuff that covered this steep rock repelled me instantly with the same feeling when you pick up a garden slug and then the feelings from forty one years ago flooded back. Then I was half way up the rock pitch with water trickling over the toes of my new Hawkins boots that in turn scrabbled for grip on the water washed slime. My body was in a state of readiness for falling off, where instinctively every muscle of arms, hands and legs sickeningly tenses up to hold on for dear life and, in doing so, a sort of levitation happens where desperation pushes abilities beyond the call of duty. At this point hope and faith make an entrance to force the body onwards and upwards to find something more secure just out of reach, sometimes that hold just out of reach can save you or lead you into even more 'shit' - the choice is yours. 

Well, I am still here and the choice paid off to grab that handful of wet roots above my head that day so long ago. The thought is too much and I turn tail to head up another neighbouring rock gully that looks more amiable to ascend - huh, the fool has been tricked again and I am about to repeat history.

Corrie Fee and Mayar - pastel sketch on paper

In true pioneering spirit I launch up the gully that looks as if it will be a joy to scramble on, clean rock tempts me higher towards an uncertain ending and where does it lead, I don't know but go.The plan is to head up this gully and then descend the upper half of the other gully, that I dared not climb, to see these rare flowers; simple, yet the mountains surely know how to fool the fool as their trap is always baited. Things go well until a wet, rock cul-de-sac halts progress and I side step onto what looks like drier rock with a tiny turf ledge for my foot. It gives way and I am left hanging from one broken finger nail's grip on a rock hold. 

As that point of levitation surges through my body a small, ragged willow branch acts as saviour and a 'hand' is held out and I grab it to lunge in a scrabbling, dive onto a steep, sloping bed of luxuriant moss. How can it go from good rock to ungraspable sponge in seconds. Plunging my fingers deep into the moss, hope and faith are riding high now and that little bit of levitation had long since departed, leaving me with my desperate peching for breath as the only form of spiritual buoyancy. 

Like something from a bad dream, I am crawling up a steep hanging blanket of deep, dry moss to escape the slippery hell down below and even Dante couldn't have invented this one. Knees sink into the moss and I am on an emerald coloured magic carpet now and as I wait for a bolt from the sun lasered blue sky overhead to set the whole lot on fire - it ends, and on a secure heather ledge my heart stops pounding and I bite off the doubled back, broken nail as I scramble to the summit ridge.

Some deer tracks lead me down over loose, sandy gravel at the top of the gully to begin the torture again with a nerve tingling descent into the steep 'forbidden' chasm where a botanical legend grows. All is moving and sliding underneath a thick growth of wet Lady's Mantle and ultimate care is taken not to start a land-slide on this fifty degree slope. Slowly each step is placed until it feels secure under-foot. I repeat to myself, 'look well to each step', and as the great climber Edward Whymper had stated, "Do nothing in haste; look well to each step; and from the beginning think what may be the end.”

Cicerbita alpina

One hundred metres of careful descent unveils a glory of Alpine Sow-thistle flowers swaying in the wind that draughts upwards through the deep chasm. The plant's leaves are pale green and less spiky edged than I had expected but the flower colour is a beautiful warm cobalt violet-blue, with some of the already flowered heads turning to thistle-down seed which are held tightly within unopened bracts to protect the flotsam down from dampness.. When it gets the chance to grow, away from grazing sheep and deer, it seems quite profuse with many plants flourishing up the gully walls. I had seen this plant growing in the Alps where it is fairly common, but to find it on my 'back doorstep' is particularly special.

They will remain untouched and untrampled by grazing beasts, or this man at least, because the descent is broken by another dangerous looking rock pitch below and the plants are truly trapped by the mountain between steep gully walls, chock-stones and rock pitches. I count two hundred and twenty flowering, red tinted stems crammed into the gully bed and, ironically, after all that death defying stupidity I can only get close to them through the camera zoom lens, that unfortunately blurs with the moving stems, or binoculars. In consideration, it is just as well that I did not venture further onto the area where they grow because the gully bed material is very prone to root damaging slippage and that might be a contravention of the Wildlife and Countryside Act and to think, in complete contrast, Italians and Laplanders eat it as salad!

Sketching today above Corrie Fee

I am released from the gripping, rock jaws of my botanical quest and delivered back into sunlight. Grassy meadows and dozens of migrant House Martins are hawking for insects on the high, lush green slopes overlooking Corrie Fee, as shown in my sketch. A juvenile Peregrine Falcon screeches at my intrusion near its cliff top home and it sets off to soar into the void which is filled with sweet air smacked through with solar lemon-yellow, the bird's grey-brown plumage catching the light at every turn and I can share in its flight for dizzying moments as I look down over its aerial world.

A rain shower started not long after that and followed me back down the glen as I passed the flowers of Sneezewort, Spear Thistle, Harebell, Knapweed and a couple of rarities, probably introduced by those pioneering botanists, called Alchemilla conjuncta and Homogyne alpina or Purple Coltsfoot which is reputed to be the rarest plant found in these hills. The Glorious Twelfth will certainly mean something different to me from now on.

Cicerbita alpina

Alpine Sow-thistle, Lady's Mantle, Colt's-foot, Angelica, Mountain Sorrel, Yellow Saxifrage and Marsh Hawk's-beard

Cicerbita alpina on the gully wall

Young Cicerbita collected in the gully,  July 1926

Scottish Alpine Botanical Club c.1890

Another rarity, Alchemilla conjuncta

The purple drumlins of Corrie Fee

Notes;

All sketches and photos done on the day, except Alpine Botanical Club & herbarium specimen and are copyright.

Please be aware that it is illegal to disturb nesting eagles or other raptors and you may do so inadvertently in your journeys into the highlands. I do not recommend searching for any of the species mentioned in this blog because this may cause undue disturbance to them. With my knowledge of the areas described in this blog I can locate and observe protected species at a respectful distance usually from about 1000 metres for short periods of time only.

chock-stone - large rock or boulder wedged in a gully bed.

Glorious Twelfth - start of the grouse shooting season.

Hawkins - Northampton firm that used to make hill walking boots; mine lasted for 10 years until my Border-Lakeland terrier pup 'Moy' chewed the tops off them, must have done her good - she lived for 19 years!

Cicerbita alpina is listed in the Schedule of Protected Plants (Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981)
Subject to the provisions of this Part, if any person—
(a)intentionally picks, uproots or destroys any wild plant included in Schedule 8; or
(b)not being an authorised person, intentionally uproots any wild plant not included in that Schedule,
he shall be guilty of an offence.
(2)Subject to the provisions of this Part, if any person—
(a)sells, offers or exposes for sale, or has in his possession or transports for the purpose of sale, any live or dead wild plant included in Schedule 8, or any part of, or anything derived from, such a plant; or
(b)publishes or causes to be published any advertisement likely to be understood as conveying that he buys or sells, or intends to buy or sell, any of those things,
he shall be guilty of an offence.
(3)Notwithstanding anything in subsection (1), a person shall not be guilty of an offence by reason of any act made unlawful by that subsection if he shows that the act was an incidental result of a lawful operation and could not reasonably have been avoided.
(4)In any proceedings for an offence under subsection (2)(a), the plant in question shall be presumed to have been a wild plant unless the contrary is shown.

George Don 1764 - 1814
Don was one of the first environmentalists who warned about the destruction of natural habitats and species extinction. At Restenneth Moss in 1802, a rare sedge Eriophorum alpinum which he had discovered only ten years previously was wiped out due to peat cutting and land drainage work. He created 9 volumes of pressed and catalogued plants called Herbarium Britaninicum.

Map of the area