Wasdale, Mitredale and Irton Fell flora

Mitredale, Ahead, the sea at Ravenglass

Retracing our steps to Wasdale Hall YHA, we emerged from the trees on Irton Fell and descended  toward  Wast Water.  Our splendid walk almost completed, we found something that I could have lingered over for hours.  On the lower slopes of Irton Fell was boggy ground, full of water-tracks and  tussocks concealing ankle-traps which slowed us to a lurching progress. Before us lay a great sweep of warm colour and detail within the pattern and the intricate mix began to appear. 
 

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Sunlight falls fitfully to colour a sweep of flowers and what I saw here was deeper and richer than the rather muted images show.   Enlarge the image and there’s more to discover. The warm flame colour is the fruit-bodies of bog asphodel, the dominant plant. Its scimitar-shaped leaves will soon show in rich autumn colour.  There’s a vibrant clump of heather and the pink flowers of cross-leaved heath. 
Traditionally, woodland  is considered  to be  the highlight of autumn.  The Fall is about  autumn colour and trees shedding their leaves.  I think the fells at this season can be as spectacular.  

I love the flora of peat bog and I like to delve and discover.  Plants interweave and support each other in tussock and hummock , strands that can clutter a photograph if you’re looking to show a single flower.  Photography is  a slow study if you hope  to do it well.  Not wanting to be left behind at the end of a 12.2 mile walk and over 3000 feet, I took these hastily . There is heather, including a few white flowers. Cross- leaved heath flowers pink and fades into  subtle and warm shades of ochre. Coming upon a sump, the lower slopes of a fell-side of bog flora, I like to predict what I might find- then match my expectation to what I discover.  There are always surprises. Bog asphodel has long been a favourite of mine but I’ve rarely seen the plant growing so densely  and in such profusion.   The appearance of this clump and the spraying- out of the flowers is atypical.

If it’s a harsh winter, look for the buff-grey spikes of bog asphodel  above the snow.  After a brief  summer flowering  many plants die back to leave only a trace of their presence. But the seed heads of bog asphodel  ripen through pinks to flame .  Narthecium ossifragrum  endures.  Ossifragum, of bone.  The structure of those grey spikes seems to me like vertebrae left  by the voles that favour the tussocks and feed the owls of Wasdale.  
We tend to focus on the brief summer flowering phase of plants but I’m curious about the reproductive process entire, the life-cycle. What happens after flowering is over?  Fruit-bodies, seed dispersal.  You can track bog asphodel but what about insectivorous plants like butterwort and sundew? When insects disappear with the last days of summer their source of nutrients is gone.  The star-shaped leaves of butterwort linger through autumn, but sundew? I often search to see how far into autumn I can find it. And today I’ve captured it inadvertently.  A  hasty  photograph of wine-coloured sphagnum moss revealed sundew embedded within it. 

Sphagnum moss with the last of the season’s sundew. Muncaster Fell. 13 September 2015.

Sundew looks blanched and colour seeps away but the structure is clear, those sticky hairs that trap  insect prey. 
It’s not the first time I’ve come home to discover my images show things unexpected. That’s part of the fun, the discovery.  Rather like a precious Turkish or Persian carpet you walk on each day and suddenly come upon a motif you’d never noticed before.