Dumfriesshire Botany Group at Thornhill, 2nd August 2025
Nine of us met at the centre of Thornhill on a pleasantly warm dry day. Not everyone was able to stay all day but we had this number up to lunchtime with a smaller number until the finish at about 16:00. We were recording on the eastern edge of Thornhill and the adjacent countryside in NX8895 and NX8896, squares that had no previous records.
Thornhill, a small town of about 1500 residents is a Queensbury Estate designed settlement dating from about 1717. It sits on the flatter land of the mid Nith Valley. The best of this is cultivated and the fields are either arable or grass. Less well drained ground has been planted with trees. Thornhill sits on a basin of Permian age sandstone. This was laid down in desert conditions some 250m years ago. The sandstone is good for building and this is evident in the older local buildings that are faced with this distinctively red coloured stone.
We headed east from the crossroads and explored the pavement and public space plants. An early plant which was recurrent through the day on amenity grass and verges was Small-fruited Prickly-sedge Carex muricata subsp. pairae. This is a tussocky sedge of open dry unimproved grassland that has a very scattered occurrence in the county and is always nice to see. Walking along roads and looking at amenity spaces can reveal garden escapes though in this part of Thornhill we only saw Honesty Lunaria annua, Fox and Cubs Pilosella auratica and Butterfly-bush Buddleja davidii that really come into this category. Other memorable things were Bittersweet Solanum dulcamara with bright red berries and in the old churchyard Des Etangs’ St John’s-wort Hypericum maculatum x perforatum = H. x desetangsii and Autumn Hawkbit Hieracium sabaudum.
At the edge of the town there is a path into Kirk Plantation that goes into the second square we were covering. At the start this is quite a young plantation with a limited ground flora but the ground clearly had previously had a heathy nature as was evidenced by the presence of Gorse Ulex europaeus Bracken Pteridium aquilinum and Broom Cytisus scoparius wherever there was a break in the canopy. As the path dropped the ground became wetter and boggy with peat in places. So we found Marsh violet Viola palustris, Ragged-robin Lychnis flos-cuculi, Wild Angelica, Angelica sylvestris and White Sedge Carex curta. There was more willow here Grey Willow Salix cinerea subsp oleifolia and Goat Willow Salix caprea and Alder Alnus glutinosa. Of interest was finding the Loch Ness Bramble Rubus nessensis. This is part of distinctive group of brambles that grow a bit more like Raspberry and particularly seem to favour former heathland. Its large thin leaves and small purple prickles are typical and the fact the fruit goes dark red but not black (if you look closely) helps confirm its identity.
We joined the track running back towards the golf course and headed for the old curling pond which is called the New Loch on the OS map. When we got there we stopped for lunch. It was good here to see mature specimens of both Hornbeam Carpinus betulinus and White Willow Salix alba. While we ate Bob waded into the loch area around the remaining open water as he needed to leave us early. So we got a preview of the kinds of plants to be found in this wet land when he brought back some specimens and reassuring news that the ground was largely dry. He also usefully had made a path into the tall vegetation in what is otherwise a rarely visited location by people. What had formerly been an open body of water was now much colonised by plants that like such wet conditions leaving only a small area of open water. A good list of plants typical of these conditions were found including Reed Canary-grass Phalaris arundinacea, Bogbean Menyanthes trifoliata, Skullcap Scutellaria galericulata, Water Horsetail Equisetum fluviatile, Marsh Cinquefoil Comarum palustre, Bottle Sedge Carex rostrata and Bladder Sedge Carex vesicaria. These sedges occasionally grow together like this and have distinctive flower heads and leaves. But there was a plant looking intermediate in these characters. Closer inspection later with advice and confirmation from the national referee for sedges Mike Porter confirmed that this was the first Dumfriesshire record for the hybrid between the two Carex rostrata x vesicaria = C. x involuta. The flower spikes are intermediate in length, the utricles intermediate in shape, the leaves have stomata in quantity on both surfaces and the stamens are undehisced within the male spikes.
To complete the square we walked towards the golf course picking up a few more species along the hedgerows and verge. Then we turned back towards the town and eventually back into the first square. Along the pavement edge we came across Keeled Garlic Allium carinatum, Smooth Hawks-beard Crepis capillaris and more Small-fruited Prickly-sedge. Two hectad firsts in the gravel of an electricity substation were the uncommon Scarlet Pimpernel Lysimachia arvensis and Caper Spurge Euphorbia lathyris. This last is often in bird seed but once established can be persistent and is spreading north in Britain.
Total records in NX8895 120, NX8896 162
Chris Miles
BSBI county recorder for Dumfriesshire VC73 – see bsbi.org/dumfriesshire
