Aliens on the hillside
ONE OF the great things about the Northern Corries of Cairn Gorm is the naturalness of the vegetation.
The lack of overgrazing and disturbance of the area has produced vegetation that is just about as natural as it can be.
So it comes as a bit of a surprise to see plants flourishing happily in Coire Cas that wouldn’t normally be anywhere near this high, so here’s an un-nature trail for you as you progress up the mountain.
Near the base station the mountain garden, started in the 1970s by Ben Humble of Glenmore Lodge, has now spilt monkey flower down all the nearby watercourses.
Our attempts to eradicate it by pulling have apparently had the opposite effect. This and the cultivated form of lady’s mantle are abundant garden escapees here.
Below the middle station, railway passengers have been spying the pink saxifrage better known as London Pride, and nearby is a very high stand of coltsfoot, which normally stays on low waste ground.
At nearly 1,100 metres I have recently come across a clump of nettles beside the M1 tow that is 200 metres higher than the previous highest, on Great Dun Fell.
The top alien on Cairn Gorm, as pointed out by our guides on the summit walk, is a rosebay willowherb above 1,150 metres, above which, it’s native nature all the way.
No-one is getting too worried about any of these aliens, and chemical warfare against them is a little way off.
We have seen rosebay in Strath Nethy, dandelions in Coire an t-Sneachda and coltsfoot in Glenfeshie.
All these species spread seed by wind, and there is no shortage of wind on Cairn Gorm. What’s more surprising is that they thrive in these hostile environments.
Now don’t start me on the Cairn Gorm rabbits…
