Natural History Photographs


Theth, Albania
Along Rruga Gjecaj
18 July 2017


A larger open space along the Rruga Grejcaj, some meadows surrounded by pine and mixed forest. In the pine forest, I found the intruiging mycoheterotrophic plant, Monotropa hypopitys. This plants derives its sugars from the pine tree, to which it is connected by a fungus that lives in symbiosis with the pine tree, but is parasitized upon by the so-called Dutchman's pipe.

On one of the woodland clearings, I found a huge boulder with a remarkably chaotic texture. Fragments are neatly layered, as one would expect from sedimentary rocks; but the fragments seem randomly oriented, something one would definitely not expect from regular sedimentation processes. A possible interpretation is that the chaotic orientation of the fragments resulted from a marine slump, a sudden slide of steeply sloping marine sediments. The presence of strongly warped rocks at the nearby Qafa e Thorës lends some credence to this interpretation, as the warped structures might also have originated in a marine slump - perhaps the same?



Milesia crabroniformis
This species had not been recorded yet for Albania, according to Fauna Europaea.


Polistes biglumis


Gentiana cruciata


Gentiana cruciata with mines of Chromatomyia gentianae


Neotinea ustulata Listera ovata


Monotropa hypopitys


Teucrium montanum Teucrium spec.


Viola spec. with gall Prunella grandiflora


Volucella
zonaria

Lycaenidae
Polyommatus
damon