We join Cairngorms Connect Monitoring Officer, Ellie Dimambro-Denson, on the hunt for the rare twinflower on the outskirts of Nethy Bridge.
Ellie is cycling up a steep gravel track. I’m crawling along behind her in an e-corsa, keeping a careful distance behind her bobbing rucksack, out of which, pokes a long bamboo cane and a large 50cmx50cm quadrat.
We’re headed to a quiet patch of forest on the outskirts of Nethy Bridge, part of the RSPB Abernethy National Nature Reserve. Ellie straps her bike to a sturdy conifer, and we head into the old plantation.
Weaving in and out of Scots pine we hunt down a small patch of a very special and rare plant. If it weren’t for the marked wooden stakes lurking in the heather, I would have completely walked past the tiny creeping tendrils of our quarry – twinflower (Linnaea borealis).
We first spot a tendril in the cracks of bark, which leads us to the larger colony. Out of season, the iconic pale pink bell-shaped flowers have receded, although a few last weary umbrellas hold on, faded to a scrunched, dull rusty brown. The creeping leaves are the main identifier (although easily mistakable for blaeberry to the untrained eye). I’m nervous of stepping on this incredibly rare plant, but Ellie reassures me that a little bit of gentle disturbance never hurt anybody, and so I do my best to move like a large free-roaming herbivore that would have once travelled through the forest. The plants have tiny hooks on their seeds which they use to hitch a lift on passing herbivores to spread. I imagine tiny twinflower seeds grabbing onto the hems of my trousers, like rock climbers hanging on for dear life.
This patch was first discovered by Jeremy Roberts (then senior Site Manager at RSPB Abernethy, now Programme Manager for Cairngorms Connect) on a routine fence checking visit. There are dwindling numbers of genetically diverse sites of plants left in Scotland, as climate change and habitat fragmentation threaten their existence.
As part of the Cairngorms Connect Science and Monitoring Programme, we’re building on work started by Andy Scobie of NatureScot (then working as the Cairngorms Rare Plants Project Officer) in 2014, to restore populations of twinflower within the Cairngorms National Park. This work has two strands:
1) Re-introduction of twinflower at new, suitable sites.
2) Re-enforcement of existing twinflower colonies, increasing the genetic diversity to improve production of fertile seed.
These two projects both aim to encourage cross-pollination between genetically different twinflower patches. In Scotland, historic land management means that populations are fragmented and genetically isolated with 80% of the natural patches only contain a single genetic individual, making them very vulnerable to localised extinction. As pollinators struggle to pollinate beyond 10m, planting genetically different twinflower close by will eventually, with hope, help to form one creeping, genetically robust, pink-hatted mass in a mosaic across the forest, securing it’s presence in Scottish woodlands into the future.
The first plot we find is a part of a re-enforced natural twinflower patch with plots of genetically diverse individuals – each containing an original clutch of 16 stolons (a creeping horizontal plant stem, not to be confused with the delicious German Christmas bread), all from the same donor patch. Originally collected from other populations within the National Park, and planted in 2014, these intrepid plants have now expanded well beyond the plot boundaries. Additional plots supporting these were added in 2019 and little by little are beginning to establish. Twinflower restoration can be a slow process. After planting following direct translocations, the first couple of years are focused on survival before any real growing can start. But once it starts, it really starts; twinflowers can grow around 50cm a year, and one natural patch has been recorded to cover a staggering 100m.
We walk to a neighbouring site where plots of twinflower were reintroduced to a new part of the forest in 2020 and Ellie unpacks her monitoring equipment, taking height measurements with her bamboo cane and percentage cover calculations with her quadrat. Her fingers sift through the vegetation seeking out the tiny twinflower leaves amongst the grass and wood sorrel. Lying almost flat on the ground she peers into the vegetation, eye level with inflorescences – the name for the flowering stems (and my new favourite word).
The plots seem to be healthy, and Ellie is pleased with this tiny plant’s progression. She’s hopeful this re-introduction and re-enforcement project will give twinflower populations in the National Park a chance at long term survival.
Alongside these direct interventions, wider habitat restoration work is underway to improve quality of existing forests and expand the forest to it’s natural limit. Twinflower thrives in old plantations, where the slightly shadier light conditions mean it’s not out competed by blaeberry and heather. In a more natural forest, these shadier zones would form part of a mosaic of habitats, providing niches for a huge range of plants and invertebrates. Across the Cairngorms Connect landscape, these mosaics are being actively created and a natural balance of habitats restored. We’re hopeful that this wild landscape in the making will give this rare plant a fighting chance of recovery in the Cairngorms.
Cairngorms Connect Deer Stalker Jack Ward reflects on an unbelievably special week of wildlife sightings during his work across the Cairngorms Connect Partnership area.
Hen Harriers are one of the most persecuted birds of prey in the UK, but over the past five years they have found a refuge at Wildland Cairngorms and the number of successful nests there are rising rapidly.
