Fond farewell

I had only a couple of hours this morning before I had to leave for the airport.  I spent the first of them among the orchids on the slope below the cabin.  Ophrys orchids are one of the best things in the world.  Among David Attenborough’s prolific outputs is a series called Attenborough’s Ark in which he chooses his favourite and most extraordinary animals, those that he would save on an ark if there were a cataclysmic disaster.  Ophrys would be in my ark.  First, they are so pleasing to look at.  The neat spike of flowers is a work of architectural excellence, and each floral decoration is full of character.  Two side petals to suggest ears; the pollinia or small glands are a pair of eyes; and the lip is a nose or a whole body with arms and legs if you fancy.

Then there is the pattern and texture of the lip.  It seems so velvety and soft and it contrasts perfectly with the almost plastic-looking speculum (the smooth bit in the middle).  I think this is part of the appeal: instead of being part of the natural world, the flower looks as though it is artificial, even though it is not.

All this is very attractive, but we haven’t even considered the amazing biology behind it.  When I first heard about it I couldn’t believe it: it does what?  It turns out that the flowers are not like this to please me but rather to fool a male wasp into mating with them.  All the colours and textures are there to mimic a female insect.  The visual and sensual cues are supplemented with pheromones.  All this is so convincing that passing males will eagerly mount the lip and get the pollinia stuck to their head.  They will carry these to another orchid flower if they try to have go on that one too.

The Mediterranean is the centre of diversity of Ophrys: there are many more species here than further north (only four in Britain).  How many more is a matter of fierce debate.  The trend, as in most plants and animals, has been one of recognising more and more species.  This has been taken to the extreme by Pierre Delforge’s book on Orchids of Europe, which lists 251 Ophrys species.  If you flick through the pages you will find dozens of seemingly identical plants all given different names and separated by rather inconsequential features.  To me, some of the photos contradict the descriptions and keys and they do not make a strong case for separating all the entities he has named.  He has described even more species since.  Other people have found this approach too much, and they have produced genetic evidence to suggest that it would be more sensible to recognise only a dozen or so species, each of which is more readily separable from the others but has many local forms, some of which are produced by ancient or modern hybridisation.

 

On my hillside I found myself in agreement with the lumpers.  I looked at the amount of yellow around the edge of the lip, the shape of the speculum, and its colour.  I could see as much variation here, sometimes even within the same plant, as there seemed to be between some of the Delforgian species.  I was happy to call everything Ophrys fusca, apart from a couple of lutea that were not quite in flower.

I went up to the limestone rocks above for a last time, past a couple of Orchis conica that I had overlooked.  The Iris planifolia was now gone over, but Mediterranean Spurge Euphorbia characias, a plant that I associate very much with holidays, was in flower.

The pretty little Veronica cymbalaria, one of the week’s common plants, was here too, and I found a not too flighty Spanish Festoon and Provencal Hairstreak.  And with that it was time to stuff as much ham and biscuits as I could into my luggage and go back to Britain.

A final word of thanks to the Departamento de Biología Vegetal at Universidad de Málaga, and the publishers who have made the floras (one each for eastern and western Andalucia) available online for anyone to download for free.  Both are extensively illustrated, the western volumes with line drawings of every species, and the eastern set with beautiful photographs, making them much easier to use than most keys.  Does anywhere else in Europe have such a useful and readily available identification resource for visiting or resident botanists?  Congratulations once again to Andalucia on taking the lead.

I also need to mention Flora Iberica, which was very helpful once I got back to an internet connection.  Like the Andalusian floras it is available online, thanks to the Real Jardín Botánico.  I cannot praise highly enough the public spirit of these institutions in making works available so that anyone can enjoy and appreciate the wonderful plants of Spain.

Getting my goat

On my last full day I drove back through the cork oak forests to Grazalema and on to Benoacaz to the Salto del Cabrero trail.  From the edge of the village a narrow path passes goat pens and oak woodland before emerging on a pasture with many orchids and a carpet of Narcissus papyraceus along the side of a stream.  The Paper-white Narcissus is a good English name for this flower, which looked particularly delicate and papery in the dappled shade under the oaks.

Ophrys tenthredinifera and Ophrys fusca were here in good numbers, and Spanish Festoons cruised over the meadow.

On the far side, the trail and I climbed up the rocks to the pass above.  It is easy to ignore crucifers; a lot of them are rather similar, and to me there is something about the form of their flowers that is not as pleasing as those of many other plants.  Perhaps they a little ungainly.  However, Biscutella baetica caught my attention here because of its unusual fruits: two flat discs joined together like a pair of cartoon eyes.

 I approved and moved on until a bright red bug brought me to another stop.  Thanks to the helpful guide by Luis Vivas, I was able to identify it as Spilostethus pandurus.

I had lunch while listening to a Black Wheatear singing from a nearby boulder while Griffon Vultures flew to and from the crags, then I headed back down and across the pasture just as the goats were heading out.

As I drove to Benamahoma, I noticed a group of naked men on a stalk so I immediately tried to find somewhere to pull over so I could stop for a better look.  After a short walk back along the road I reached the site where there were many Naked Man Ocrhids Orchis italica.  Closer inspection revealed that the little figures at the top of the stalks were not only naked but very clearly male, and well endowed males at that.  Victorian ladies would probably have found the plant too much.

Most of the orchids were in grassland, but some were growing under oaks, where they were joined by Spanish Bluebells Hyacinthoides hispanica and Narrow-leaved Helleborines Cephalanthera longifolia.  The latter is a plant I have not seen in Britain, where it is much scarcer than White Helleborine Cephalanthera damasonium.  Floras often make a meal of telling them apart, suggesting that you need to decide whether the leaves are ovate or ovate-lanceolate, as if that were helpful, but they are distinctive plants: Narrow-leaved has short bracts, so the inflorescence arises abruptly from the leaves and towers above them; White Heleborine’s bracts are much longer and make the flower spike look like a leafy continuation of the rest of the stem.

 

Back at my car parking spot Ophrys lutea was flowering; the bright buttercup yellow border was striking even from a few metres away.  I left the car here and walked down the road to the start of the trail along the river.

Three-cornered Leek Allium triquetrum was frequent under the trees along the banks, but the dense scrub left little room for other plants.  I reached a more open clearing where I had an encounter with a co-operative Large Psammodromus Psammodromus algirus, then I decided to leave the crowds and take road over the Las Palomas pass.  There were still ibexes to be seen somewhere, and I thought the higher I can get the better my chances of finding them would be.

Before the pass, I came to more jonquils on rocks near the Pinsapar trail car park.  I thought they might be Narcissus cuatrecasasii on their typical ledge habitat, but they turned out to be assoanus.  I tried to convince myself that these were big boulders among vegetation rather than sheer cliff faces, but I was a little disappointed that perhaps I did not understand the ecology of these species as well as I had thought. I drove over the pass and down the other side, past many more jonquils, all without a convenient car park nearby so they remained unexamined.  A group of Giant Orchids Himantoglossum robertianum needed no stopping for identification, but a small layby had been provided for my convenience so I used it.  The giants were growing with normal-size Orchis olbiensis and a large and attractive legume, Erophaca baetica.

The sun was now setting so I had to let go my hopes of ibex and turn back over the pass to Grazalema and home.  And of course it was now, just as there was enough light left to see them, that two large animals ran in front of the car and up the bank beside the road where they were good enough to pause and start grazing.  They confused me at first because they did not have the full horns or beard of a male ibex, so I assumed they must be Mouflon Ovis musimon. But the horns were the wrong shape, so they must have been a couple of young male Spanish Ibex Capra pyrenaica.  Talk about leaving things until the last minute.  If you can prove that they were ibexes, please let me know.  If you can prove that they were not, then you should probably let me know, but don't expect me to be pleased about it.

Down by the riverside

Mid-morning I was at Benaoján station, not to take a train but to walk over the railway to the Río Guadiaro trail.  The path took me over the river and into oak forest with grass clearings.

One of these clearings was a mound with a nice selection of plants, including one or two Narcissus assoanus still in flower (and others that had finished).

Here too was Linaria oblongifolia, and my first Yellow Bee Orchid Ophrys lutea, which was even brighter and more striking than I imagined it would be.

 

My next distraction was a Scarce Swallowtail Iphiclides podalirius on some asphodels Asphodelus macrocarpus.

As the trail approached the river again I heard an Iberian Chiffchaff singing from the trees on the other side.  I climbed down the bank to try to get nearer and work out where it was, but every time I did that I couldn't hear the song for the roar of the river, so I went back up and found that the chiffchaff was too far away again.  So it continued, and I never did see it.

Back at the station, I climbed up a small path to the main road.  There were some fumitories in the rougher parts.  One of them was Fumaria reuteri, a rare casual in Britain, but perhaps native here.  Note the smooth sepals and purple tipped flowers.

Another was Fumaria capreolata with its distinctive down-turned stalks on the older flowers.

The stony ground above was home to a star-of-Bethlehem Ornithogalum baeticum and the inelegantly named Barbary Nut Gyandriris sisyrinchium which is an iris and not at all nutty.

I drove out of Montejaque and through the Puerto de Tavizna, a very scenic route that takes you past limestone cliffs and out into agricultural land.  I saw a group of jonquils in one of the fields, so I stopped to investigate.

Compared with the other jonquils I had seen, these had even longer tubes and pedicels, and even shorter coronas.  These are the characters of Narcissus jonquilla, which is what these plants must be, but I wondered whether any of the week's previous jonquils, with their slightly shorter flowers were therefore fernandesii.  That species is supposed to be intermediate between jonquilla and assoanus, but, as is ever the case with Narcissus, nobody is able to agree on what it is or what it looks like.  Flora Iberica treats it as part of the variation within assoanus, which is practical approach, but a recent DNA analysis of the genus puts it with jonquilla and suggests that it is derived from a hybrid between jonquilla and gaditanus.  Take your choice.

Despite the variation in measurements, all of my meadow jonquils have had straight or slightly upcurved tubes, whereas fernandesii is supposed to have a slightly downcurved one (gaditanus has a very downcurved tube, so this fits with the hybrid origin), so I am going to call them all jonquilla.

 

As I had found somewhere to stop, I walked back down the road and through some limestone rocks towards the Cerro de Tavizna, an impressive steep mound with fields of scree tumbling down its side.  The rocks were rich in orchids and other delights, including more Fritillaria lusitanica and Gynandriris sisyrinchium.

A bit of a climb was needed to get to Ornithogalum reverchonii, a white bluebell-like star-of-Bethlehem that was just coming into flower.  This is one of the rarest of the Betic species; it is found only in Cazorla and the Serranía de Ronda in Spain, and very locally in Morocco.

Back along the roadside there were more Ophrys orchids.  Some fusca, lacking the yellow margin of many of those from El Cortijo Nuevo, and tenthredinifera.

 

All week I had been seeing false daffodils: the yellow flowers of a large buttercup can make you think you have found another Narcissus high up on the rocks.  But it is still a pretty plant, and a fine addition to the natural rock garden here.

It goes by the name of Ranunculus spicatus, which is pleasant enough, but if you want to separate it from the North African plants it becomes subsp. blepharicarpos, which is enough to put me off my dinner.

On the rocky slopes below the road, I found this splendid hound's-tongue Cynoglossum cheirifolium subsp heterocarpum.  Its most attractive and distinctive feature, the silver-white covering of velvet hairs, distinguishes it from the typical subspecies, which is found throughout the western Mediterranean, whereas this plant is yet another Betic species found only in the mountains of southern Spain and North Africa.

Instead of passing Ronda again on my way back, today I went into the town to have a look around.  After negotiating its narrow streets I found a space to park the car and walked up the hill to the bridge.  This spans El Tajo gorge, an impressively deep cleft, with cliffs plummeting down to the river below.  It is surprising to find such a spectacle in the middle of a town, and it accounts for some unusual urban birds.  Where you might expect to find Jackdaws, instead there are Choughs flying around the streets, and from a viewpoint near the Plaza de Toros you can look down on Lesser Kestrels while Alpine Swifts speed by at eye level.  Just don’t get too close to the edge if you are not good with heights.