Summer meeting 2013: Raasay, Scotland

HomeEventsSummer meeting 2013: Raasay, Scotland

29 June 2013 - 6 July 2013

Meeting report

The BBS loves an island. There is something uniquely satisfying in spending a week on a small and circumscribed piece of land to get a grip on its flora. Raasay is ideally suited for this, being just the right size for such a trip. The idea was to cover the island systematically tetrad by tetrad in order to get a really good idea of its bryophytes, and luckily a sufficient number of people turned up to make this possible. While the BBS has visited Skye on a couple of occasions (1968 and 2001) it had never been to Raasay. Indeed, Raasay has been a remarkably poorly recorded island. Hilary and John Birks did not include it in their Skye Flora, and made few records there. A small number of bryologists have visited over the years, but have made very little impact, and most of the island was terra incognita. It was always likely to be rich, though, with a great diversity of geology and habitat within a small area, including the famous east coast limestone cliffs at Hallaig and Screapadal, rich in flowering plants and immortalised in the poetry of Sorley MacLean.

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Location:

Kinlochewe, Scotland