Upper Teesdale botany expedition

After a long gap (during which I started a new job and have been super busy) I decided to show you some photos of some rare and not so rare plants that I saw today on a  trip to the upper reaches of the River Tees.

Upper Teesdale, and specifically Cronkley Fell, Widdybank Fell and the banks of the Tees in that area are home to a whole suite of species (many of them Artic/Alpine specialists) that are really rare in the rest of the country and lots more that are uncommon even if more widespread. I'm not going to go into why this is in this blog (mainly because I can't remember). Suffice it to say that it is one of the most special regions of the British Isles for a botanist.

Today I met up with my friend and colleague Chris at a little car park between Middleton-in-Teesdale and Langdon Beck and we started with a walk along the river. Chris had to leave after a couple of hours, after which I walked up to the top of Cronkley fell. Rather than describe every step of the journey and every plant we/I saw, I'll share some of the photos with relevant information in the captions. 

The River Tees at Forest-in-Teesdale

Spring Gentian - one of the most beautiful of Teesdale's special plants,
and often one of the hardest to see as they flower quite early and for a relatively
short period. This picture doesn't really give a good impression of just how tiny
they are - those pale green leaves below the flower belong to the same plant and 
are each smaller than my thumbnail. This is a Schedule 8 species (Wildlife 
& Countryside Act 1981) so even picking a leaf is illegal.

Birds-eye Primrose - another surprisingly small plant.
The leaves are pure white underneath

Marsh Valerian - not so rare as the other two but always nice to see. 
This species is dioecious - meaning that it has male and female plants.
Another, more common, species which does this is Holly.

Early Purple Orchid - as the name implies this is one of
the earliest flowering of our  wild orchids. Most of the others
won't be out for at least a month yet.

Marsh Marigolds (aka Kingcups) were very prominent in
all the dampish grassy habitats near the river.

As you climb up towards Cronkley Fell you start to see lots of low shrubby
plants which look a bit like gorse (before it flowers) but which is actually Juniper

Marsh Thistle was the commonest of the four species of thistle
I saw today - the others being the common Spear and Creeping Thistles
and the more localised Melancholy Thistle. None of them are in flower yet

I was quite pleased with this picture of Field Wood-rush,
taken on my phone (all my pics today were). This is quite a common
species and you may even have it in your lawn. Although it looks
grass-like, it has long hairs projecting from the edges of the leaves and
(as the name suggests), is in the Rush Family

A rubbish picture I know but I couldn't resist including the only carnivorous
plant we saw today - Common Butterwort.The leaves are sticky to catch small
insects that land on them. They are subsequently digested by the plant.

This species, which grows along stream sides (usually in woodland -
 but not in this case) has, I believe the biggest 'name length to plant size' ratio
of any British plant. It's called Opposite-leaved Golden Saxifrage
(Chrysosplenium oppositifolium)  and it is tiny and fairly insignificant looking😃