Burnt Orchid Orchis ustulata
Hampshire, UK. 05 June 2006

Most orchids in the UK grow from late-May to the end of July: it’s a narrow window, and as it tends to rain heavily here most summers (when was the last time that the Wimbledon Tennis Championship ran to schedule, for example) if the sun shines anyone wanting to see them needs to get out quick…

Peter Mowday and I drove down to Salisbury Plain to look for a scarce downland speciality: the Burnt(-tip) Orchid Orchis ustulata - a nationally scarce plant in Great Britain, it’s confined to dry grassland on calcareous substrates in lowland England and is most widespread in the south of England.

The location we went to was the English Nature National Nature Reserve of Parsonage Down, a working farm 12 km north west of Salisbury and 1 km north west of the village of Winterbourne Stoke. One huge field of this beautiful site is managed for wild flowers - and six species of orchids have been recorded here.

The most abundant orchid here by far is the beautiful Burnt Orchid Orchis ustulata, which flowers in two distinct forms - an ‘early-flowering form’ from early May to June, and a ‘late-flowering form’ from July to August. The earlier plants are small but vividly coloured with a dark reddish-brown ‘bonnet’ and crimson-spotted ‘lip’. They dot the grassland at Parsonage Down in spectacular numbers: the maximum count here was a remarkable 30000 spikes, and though this is a ‘poor year’ in comparison there must been getting on for 10000.

Burnt Orchids Orchis ustulata