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Flora and fauna (Scottish Highlands)

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    Purple saxifrage

Chno Dearg, 05/04/80
    Purple saxifrage

Glen Lyon, 06/05/84

~ Flowering so early in the year, and in relatively hostile locations, this saxifrage has to work hard to attract insect pollinators. As a result, the flowers are profuse, large, colourful and seductive, with copious nectaries at the base of the twin styles. To avoid self-pollination, the ten anthers ripen first - three here are ripe, and the rest will follow before the stigma becomes receptive. As a last resort, it may reluctantly self-pollinate, but if in spite of everything there is a failure of fertilisation one year, it is no great disaster,  as the plants are  long-lived.
    Mountain azalea [Loiseleuria procumbens].

Sgurr na Bana Mhoraire, 05/06/85

~ This exquisite little plant, a relative of the rhododendron, is as tough a survivor as they come. A true alpine, it favours open, windswept sites above 650m - large swathes of the Lochnagar plateau are tinted pink by it in midsummer - and the thick waxy leaves assist in the absorption (the medial grooves channel dew) and retention of water over the vast range of temperatures that it can tolerate.