Nature Notes
How mountain marsh plants could save you from soggy feet
Whenever you go mountain walking, you’ll encounter a good old bog. Knowing a few of the marsh or bog plants that grow abundantly up in the hills is not only interesting, but it’ll help you read the land like never before. You’ll see those boot-swallowing swamps coming a mile off.
Common cotton grass is probably the easiest plant in the mountains to identify – once it’s made its cottony top that is. You must have seen them. Great patches of tufty, fluffy, white-headed plants, growing in the wetter areas, peat bogs especially, nodding in the slightest of breezes. I’ve often tried to photograph them, but it’s only on the stillest of days that I’ve succeeded. There are four native species, the ‘common’ one being, well… the commonest. Before they produce their white flowers in May and June, the slender green leaves can be hard to spot, even given the fact that they can reach over 50cm in height. The flowers give way to the fluffy head of the fruiting body almost as soon as the flower dies back. These last long into the year, giving that all-important visual clue to a bog’s existence. They’re not actually a grass but a type of sedge. Also, you cannot make cotton out of them, as the fibres are too short. But back in the day they were used to make candle wicks, to stuff mattresses and pillows, and the fluffy heads were collected by children to use in shell dressings in WWI. An altogether upstanding and patriotically useful plant.
The heath-spotted orchid – or as I’ve always known it, the marsh orchid – is the most common orchid in the country. A lover of acid soils, it is found mostly in the west and north of the UK. In Scotland it was so common that it was collected in bunches for table displays, although I’m sure that kind of behaviour is highly illegal these days. It has quite short, mostly pointed green leaves that have lots of round, brown spots on them, hence its name. The central flower spike is taller than the leaves and holds forth a pyramidal cluster of flowers, ranging from white through to more commonly pale pink to pale purples. I’ve often seen a scattered group of them with nearly every plant its own shade of colour. It doesn’t like deep peat bogs, but prefers wet ground, particularly where sphagnum moss proliferates, which could be any wet ground on an acid soil. Flowering takes place between June and August. Bees, hoverflies and a few other insect species love them. When an insect feeds on the nectar, modified stamens (pollinia) stick to the insect’s head, and they’re then taken to another plant where they pollinate that plant’s stigma.
Lastly, my favourite marsh plant of the mountains – the bog asphodel. It doesn’t grow in quite the concentration of cotton grass, but it’s quite common to get loose collections of this attractive, yellow-flowered plant. Like the others it’s restricted to acid soils in the west and north of Britain, where the bog asphodel has been recorded growing at an altitude of over 3000ft. Thick networks of underground stems connect the groups of flowers. The leaves are green and slender, curving slightly. Just like cotton grass, before they flower they’re tricky to spot. Those flowers are made up of six stamen surrounded by sepals and petals – they always remind me of yellow pipe cleaners. July is the month to be in the hills if you want to see them flowering, and they’re quite fragrant. Autumn brings on another spectacle though, as the whole plant then turns a rusty orange colour. Apparently, back in the 16th century ladies used this plant as a substitute for saffron, dying their hair yellow with it, earning it the name maiden hair.
So next time you start to sink into a bog, take the last few moments of your existence to enjoy our native marsh plants. Or just admire them from a safe distance!
KNOWING A FEW OF THE COMMON MARSH OR BOG PLANTS WILL HELP YOU SPOT BOOT-SWALLOWING SWAMPS A MILE OFF