• Plants of Skye, Raasay & The Small Isles: Guillamon Island
    Guillamon Island, to the south of Scalpay, had a single vascular plant record – Hieracium uistense (Uist Hawkweed) from 1960. The island is only small, but it is probably the largest island around Skye that I had not visited. Yesterday, Neil and I kayaked across to it from the pier at Corry near…
  • Plants of Skye, Raasay & The Small Isles: More Uncertainties
    A Creeping Buttercup plant in the garden is infected with something; I think it may be Leptotrochila ranunculi, but there is no sign of the diagnostic apothecia (yet). This small fly was also in the garden. It is one of the Lauxaniidae and looks a bit like (but not quite) Sapromyzosoma quadricincta…
  • Plants of Skye, Raasay & The Small Isles: Everlasting-Pea
    In 1979, John Palmer, a highly competent botanist, visited Skye and Raasay and made a number of interesting records. He sent me his Raasay records in 1992 and about a year after his death in 2019, I received copies of the relevant pages of his notebook. One interesting record was of Lathyrus…
  • Simon Willis: My Cycling Kit
  • Simon Willis: When a review is really an Advert