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Just for a change I thought I’d take a field trip in the UK last weekend. And just for a change it wasn’t birds I was looking for, but orchids. Yes, occasionally a young man’s fancy turns to flowers and what better flowers to look for than orchids - those beautiful and exotic plants that [...]

Clattinger Farm (Wiltshire Wildlife Trust Reserve)
April 2007
Green-winged Orchids are named for the broad greenish veins that mark the sepals and appear most years at the end of April, flowering through to early June (though these particular plants flowered in mid-April: April 2007 was both the driest and warmest ever recorded in the UK). Dependent [...]

Morgan’s Hill, Wiltshire Wildlife Trust Reserve
05 July 2006
 

The North Wessex Downs - once the scene of a fierce battle between Roundheads and Cavaliers during the Civil War.
 

Morgan’s Hill Wiltshire Wildlife Trust Reserve - near the entrance
 

On the edge of the North Wessex Downs is the small but beautiful Wiltshire Wildlife Trust Reserve of Morgan’s Hill [...]

Bird’s Nest Orchid Neottia nidus-avis
Hampshire, UK. June 2006
 
The Birds Nest Orchid, a somewhat unusual orchid found primarily in Beech woods, is a sacrophyte - a plant without chlorophyll which lives on decayed vegetation (in fact the plant lives in partnership (symbiosis) with a fungus which which lives in the matted “birds nest” of roots [...]

Fly Orchid Orchis insectifera, Bee Orchid Orchis apifera, and Fly x Bee hybrids
Somerset and Hampshire, UK. June 2005 and 2006
 
Fly Orchids are rather slender plants found typically in the Beech woods of Kent and Surrey, and less often in dry grassland and scrub on calcareous soils. Locally common in southern England and on Anglesey [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Noar Hill Nature Reserve
Hampshire, UK. 08 June 2006
 

My good friend Peter Mowday and I went east into Hampshire to three sites fairly close to each other in the South Downs: Chappetts Copse, a truly beautiful beech wood renowned for its colony of Narrow-leaved Helleborines, Noar Hill, an ancient system of chalk quarries famous for large [...]

Monkey Orchid Orchis simia, Lady Orchid Orchis purpurea, and possible Monkey x Lady hybrid
Oxfordshire, UK. 30 May 2006
 
Today the rain finally stopped long enough for Peter Mowday (long-time friend) and I to catch up with a few of the UK’s orchid species - which for years now we’ve been promising ourselves to do.

We drove down [...]