Well the tale began at Wakehurst Place, the country seat of Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Their (splendid) open day showed off to perfection the many strands of their work, and their committed and enthusiastic staff.

One of the stands featured the rare Least Water Lily. Ok, I’d never heard of it.  It has one location left in Shropshire and is otherwise not found in England. But in Scotland, while it’s rare, small, and hard to find, not least because it hardly ever displays its yellow flowers, it has dozens of localities.

Curious, I nosed about the web. One good locality was Lochan Uvie. Since I was going right there…

Well, here it is. Beautiful, but surrounded by naturally wet meadow grading effortlessly into … swamp.

So it’s hard to approach without getting very wet, and probably damaging the vegetation to boot. There are certainly plenty of White Water Lilies, but small yellow ones were not to be seen.

I’ll try again with gumboots and binoculars. Really, I’d need a boat.