Speaker: Alan Schofield
Wednesday 8th November 2023
Alan has a passion for mountain flowers and arctic alpines. This presentation showed us his photos from four visits to this area over many years, covering Panticosa to Aiguestortes. His first photo and one of his favourites was Pyrenean violet (Ramonda myconi) on a rocky ledge. This plant has violet-blue petals and is in the same family (Gesneriaceae) as African violets and Streptocarpus. It is endemic to the Pyrenees.
East of Panticosa he visited Ordesa also known as ‘the Grand Canyon of Europe’, species included single-flowered wintergreen (Pyrola chlorantha), Martigan lily (Lilium martagon) and encrusted saxifrage (Saxifraga longifolia) with an impressive foot long white flower panicle.
In Andorra on the Pique de Casamania Alan spotted Mount cenis restharrow (Ononis cristata) which has bright pink flowers, and was a particularly memorable species for him. English iris (Iris latifolia) was also seen. We wondered why the English iris is called the English iris.
Alan said one of his favourite plants was at Monte Perdido. Androsace ciliata, is a cushion-forming plant with pale pink to deep rose-red flowers with a yellow to orange eye. He had to climb to 10,500 to 11,000ft to see this plant, which is endemic to the Pyrenees.
It was lovely to see the beautiful mountains photos and some of the flowers were familiar to those in the group who visited the French Pyrenees on the Bradford Botany Group holiday in 2011. These included great yellow gentian (Gentiana lutea), creeping Globularia (Globularia repens), Pyrenean gentian (Gentiana pyrenaica), black vanilla orchid (Gymnadenia gabasiana), and also a few familiar plants from our trip to Tayside this year, such as Alpine forget-me-not (Myosotis alpestris).
Text by Kay McDowell