English name: Mountain Bladder-fern
Gaelic name: Frith-raineach Beinne

Atlas of Ferns: Not recorded.

Botanist in Skye: Not recorded.

New Atlas: Not recorded.

In Clapham, Tutin & Warburg edition 2 (1962) it states Cystopteris montana is present on Skye, I have not been able to trace the source of this statement but given the current know distribution of the species it is highly unlikely but not impossible. After all in BSBI News No. 93 there is a report of finding thousands of plants of Cystopteris diaphana, a plant new to Britain, in East Cornwall.

I asked Dr. Heather McHaffie if she had any information, in an email dated 07 September 2003 she replied “I have looked at my SNH records for Skye and there is nothing. Nothing in the old or new atlas either. I suspect it will have been a mistake. Sometimes errors get into records and are repeated. It would be exciting to find it, but a bit outside the range. If it relies on longer snow-lie in the winter it probably doesn't get long enough periods of snow cover in the west.”

McVean & Ratcliffe (1962) state that Cystopteris montana is found exclusively in the high altitude Saxifraga aizoides vegetation association found in central Scotland to which the Saxifragetum aizoidis in Birks (1973) is floristically very close.