UK/IE Orchid reports especially rare & unusual species & hybrids. Sometimes non UK species. Please include (approximate) location & date with your sightings.
Hi orchid fans!
I have just started a new Orchid blog! Please have a read and follow if you enjoy my first post, which is about Ghost Orchids (of course).
Link here:
Enjoy!
Please take time to object to this planning application to build 221 houses on Britain's only site for Greater Tongue Orchid, as well as 600 Green-winged and several other species.
Please retweet and share, instead of just liking 😃😃😃
Around 20 Early Spider Orchids counted on the Dorset coast yesterday by
@VincentBlood1
. The 2021 orchid season is open for business 👍👏👏
Nice use of a 20p coin, Vince 👍👍👍
GOOD NEWS! Tongue
#orchids
- a 🧵
The appeal by Kler Group, who planned to develop the Tiptree Serapias lingua site for housing, has been REJECTED, meaning the meadow has been saved!
This is thanks primarily to Jonathan Greenwood of Tiptree Parish Council & Essex Wildlife Trust
Incredible photos from central Portugal by Pedro Jesus: Early Purple Orchids growing 2m from the ground along the trunk of a large Oak. I've never seen anything remotely like this 😮😮😮😮😮
Big UK orchid news!!
A single Monkey orchid has been discovered in the wild in Sussex, first county record and only the third native UK site. Well done to Natasha, the finder 👏👏👏👏👏👏
Here's one from Oxfordshire this weekend just gone.
Amazing news!!! A colony of 8 plants of Irish Lady's Tresses has been found in a bog in North Wales, the first record for the country! Flowering has finished already, but access is being arranged for visitors next year 😮😮😮👏👏👏👍👍👍🍻
Yesterday, THIS happened in Anglesey!!!!
The prettiest Orchid I have ever seen in the UK or Ireland, an absolute bobby dazzler.
Having to stand with one foot each on separate tussocks, separated by deep muddy marsh, meant getting a photo was a bit wobbly, and at arm's length!
"I'm only a poor Lesser Twayblade, with leaves really tiny and twin."
Highly underrated, this little impish beauty needs more recognition. Retweet if you agree!
Incredibly, a FOURTH species of Serapias has been discovered flowering in England, this S. cordigera was growing in an unmown garden in Yorkshire.
Not very likely to be naturally occurring, but goes to show what comes up when you say no to the mow!
(Photographer undisclosed)
Third and final one from a fantastic day in the Cairngorms....an absolute scorcher of a hybrid between Heath Fragrant x Heath Spotted Orchid. It smelled as good as it looked!
Just found this photo of Coralroot Orchid from the Highlands taken in 2019, and I quite liked the dark background on it highlighting the delicacy of the plant. What do you think?
Extremely pleased to find not one, but two hybrid Bee x Late Spider Orchids in E Kent yesterday, 23rd June - only the second time I have seen this hybrid! Both had swollen ovaries!
It has been a good year for Late Spider in Kent, with nearly 400 flowering spikes across all sites.
A sea of white:
Small White Orchids from the Highlands today. Incredible numbers this year, this site must hold as many flowering plants as the rest of the UK combined. Absolutely Incredible.
#wildflowerhour
A small population of Giant Orchid was discovered in Oxfordshire on Saturday by
@HamzNobes
. They originate from seed scattered by hand, but have established and are reproducing vegetatively and by pollination. Although not natural, they are naturalised already. A great find!
The hyperchromic plant on the left has gone....either picked or dug up.
There is evidence of a lot of human activity around the spot where it grew & no livestock in the area.
I am reconsidering my policy with regard to the sharing of orchid sites.
Heath Spotted Orchid is good at any time, however many you see. But when they get anthocyanin overload, they get SEXY!
Eternal thanks to Mick Lacey for these stunners - Derbyshire, this weekend just gone.
What a relief to get out locally yesterday evening. Beautiful weather, a deserted woodland walk full of early purple orchids and bluebells and a fantastic sunset over a Worcestershire village green. With some beautiful village green-winged orchids 😊 And - breathe....
GREAT NEWS for a change. Fen
#orchid
has had an excellent year, with numbers now well over 1000 in S Wales, a record count of 1327 at one Norfolk site (only 9 there in 2000), and the first flowering of the introduced Suffolk population. All thanks to great management work. 👍👍👍
The Oxfordshire Giant Orchids aren't far behind those on the Continent, opening early this year, presumably due to the unseasonably warm and damp spell.
Photos
@HamzNobes
Calypso bulbosa is rumoured to occur in Scotland, though where the story started is hard to discover. If it were true, I suspect it would get a few visitors! This one was taken near the arctic circle in Finland back in 2008.
One of the stars of the show this weekend, when I showed a lovely group of
@Greenwings
guests around my favourite Cotswolds sites, was this near-perfect Burnt Orchid - one of 16 species and 4+ hybrid combinations seen during the busy two days. A great time had by all!
Heath Spotted Orchid is good at any time, however many you see. But when they get anthocyanin overload, they get SEXY!
Eternal thanks to Mick Lacey for these stunners - Derbyshire, this weekend just gone.
Mind blown 🤯🤯🤯🤯
Peloric Coralroot Orchid today, courtesy of my newest hero,
@Elinor96667752
who spotted this tiny beauty among a large number of normal plants.
Need to check, but the first recorded pelorism in the species since 1972, possibly the first ever of this type!
Irish Marsh Orchids in abundance on the last full day of the
@Greenwings
Emerald Isle tour. More gardens in Belmullet distract the passing driver with their displays!
Add to that a very vocal Corncrake on a beautiful windswept headland & today couldn't have been any better 🤗😍
The missing link: these three Ophrys hybrids in Dorset have a story to tell. If only they could talk, though, as how they got there will never be known. One of the parent species, Ophrys scolopax, isn't even native to Britain.
Beautiful nonetheless 😍
The wet spring has continued into early May, following a cold winter. Conditions supposedly optimum for Ghost
#Orchid
to flower. This really could be the year, imagine if it was you who found it!! Please help by volunteering to search as part of
@ghostorchiduk
Beauty parade 😍
Green-winged Orchids (Anacamptis morio) of all colours and styles, sometimes in a single plant!
Worcestershire has several fantastic sites for this species.
#wildflowerhour
Beyond beautiful 😍
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
This hyperchromic Burnt Orchid from Estonia should be renamed Scorched Orchid!
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Photo by kind permission of Rainar Kurbel.
It may not look much, but a very rare sight in the UK: - Lesser and Common Twayblades side by side.
A first for me and a great find by
@Mike_Waller_
on our
@Greenwings
Emerald Isle tour.
EXCITED!
During our last 2 days in Ireland, following our
@Greenwings
tour, we explored new sites, & appear to have found a new, large population of "machair" Pugsley's Marsh Orchids in a truly stunning location. Awaiting
@BSBIbotany
ref.
Pics
@Mike_Waller_
Thanks
@davesudds62
A remarkable count of 2,540 Greater Butterfly Orchids was made recently by the Vale Landscape Heritage Trust across several of their managed orchards in Worcestershire.
A fantastic privilege to see these & other species yesterday 😀 great work 👍 they are proud of their orchids!
This cutie is the very rare hybrid between Southern Marsh and Chalk Fragrant Orchids. It came complete with the subtle, sweet aroma of one parent.
(Sorry if hybrids aren't your thing, I think they are great)
FIRE UP THE QUATTRO! The 2019 UK
#orchid
flowering season has begun. Alan Smith found his first Early Spider in flower in Dorset yesterday, 18th March. The bottom flower has been open a few days already!
Two specialities of North-East England - Dune Helleborine subspecies sancta on Lindisfarne, and hyperchromic Northern Marsh Orchid from Hartlepool, the latter sometimes called "atrata".
#wildflowerhour
MEMORIES OF SPRING 2: Great day out in Kent with
@Jamiewa50042387
, spending time also with
@PhlebiaRadiata
and
@jelltex
, the divine Lady Orchid at
@KentWildlife
Yockletts Bank.
We also found a new population of Green-winged Orchids while there!
Well, it IS 14th June after all!
Dark Red Helleborine in flower today in North Lancs - usually a little earlier at this site than the standard July flowering, but this is early. 😮
Photo: Paul Harvey.
Just found this old (and not particularly good) photo from 31st May 2003, showing two white form Burnt Orchids from their main Derbyshire site.
These days the place still throws up pale ones but rarely without any purple, as with these. Stunners!
Wet knees and dirty elbows are always a consequence of getting a photo of coralroot orchids in woodlands.
@Leptochila
demonstrates the additional skill of not losing your lens cap at the same time 😂
Although they often grow in the same places, it's not often you get chance to have Lesser Twayblade and Coralroot in the same picture.
Scotland last week
Late Spider Orchids in Kent today, including a remarkable yellow one.
It looks like a good year for this species in the UK despite weeks of hot dry weather baking the ground from which they grow.
This site in Essex has seven species of orchid, including c700 Green-winged, and a naturalized population of Tongue orchid. Looks like it's about to be ploughed to make way for housing before any permission has been given.
What can be done?
It may not look much to the casual observer, but Dense-flowered Orchid is the main event on a visit to Ireland. Yesterday we counted 80+ on a spectacular hillside in Co. Fermanagh, today 17 more in an extensive dune system in Co. Donegal.
Our timing was perfect too👌
Recently wondered what pollinates Small White Orchid and discovered it was Lepidoptera.
Today, I actually witnessed it for the first time!
Great day shared with
@Elinor96667752
and
@appleton_andy
😍
Late Spider Orchids really do come in all sorts of flavours and shapes. Should really be called Ophrys cornucopis!
Yesterday was the first time ever I saw all four British species of Ophrys in the same day....amazing! But these four are all Late Spiders....
Some orchids from recent trips out around the country. Need a rest now! We are moving past the season of pretty ones now and into the more subtle Helleborines...YAY!
Pugsley's Marsh Orchid, Lesser Twayblade (quatroblade actually!), Dense-flowered and Early Marsh Orchids from NW Ireland over the last three days.
This area is just full of orchids and other wildlife 😍☘️
It's that time of year again...but I fear it has been too dry this season for a Ghost Orchid. Nonetheless, if we get more rain, I shall check the site where it was last recorded in 2009, as the anniversary is looming...
This from Germany in the same year.
1/2: This photo was taken in 1970 in Bucks, but it is posted as a reminder that the earliest record of Ghost Orchid from the Chilterns was 9th July....the weather has, in my opinion, been the most suitable for this species in a long time
Found by eagle eyes himself,
@Leptochila
, this beautiful hybrid is a Frog x Northern Marsh Orchid. Due to the richness of colour on other species on site, we await confirmation from the
@BSBIbotany
referee.
I've seen a few photos this season of Green-winged Orchids with this colour combo, and then found this one locally (Worcestershire) yesterday. Very striking!
Finally, this application has been rejected once and for all, and the site is safe from development.
Now access and management need to be put into place to ensure the Tongue and other orchids thrive.
Great news!
164 Tongue Orchids flowered this year.
PLEASE HELP - SERAPIAS IN ESSEX
Kler Group are appealing against Colchester's decision to refuse permission to build 221 houses on the only site in the UK for Greater Tongue Orchid.
Even if you've already objected, PLEASE could you write again 🙏
THANK YOU, PLEASE SHARE!
So many posters on here said their last orchid of the year was Autumn Lady's Tresses, so who would've thought that Ian Green's would've have been Creeping LT's??? Taken today, 1st October in Aberdeenshire, this species more typically flowers in July 😲
RED HELLEBORINE, COTSWOLDS: been made aware that the new site discovered last year has failed to produce a flowering spike this season.
The location is not being released by those looking after it.
(Photo not of actual plant).
Some rather mixed up Green-winged Orchids at Melrose Farm Meadows today, 2nd May.
I wonder why this particular site throws up these "chimera" aberrations with such regularity?
The 19 spikes of Irish Lady's Tresses are already going over in Wales, and are a lot less robust than last year.
Marsh Helleborines at Ynyslas are all over, with barely a single flower left.
Village Green-winged Orchids in Worcestershire today, 1/5/21. This village common was grazed during winter and the orchids have flourished, with more than 60 this year. Two years ago fewer than 10 flowered. Great result 👏👍👌
1/2:
My first search for a 2023 British Ghost Orchid will take place this weekend. To get us in the mood, a series of tweets on the history of its occurrence here.
The first ever record was from the time of Edward Elgar on the border of Hereford and Worcester...
Amazing! 5,000 orchid lovers now follow
@ukorchids
. Thanks everyone for the posts, tags, likes, shares and comments that keep everyone - including me - informed on what's going on in the world of UK orchids. Here's a Ghost Orchid to celebrate 🤗
Great find by my friend Chris Bell
@bellchris76
- a population of c40 Green-flowered Helleborines, Epipactis phyllanthes in Cleveland, the first county record! Just goes to show what can be lurking in uninspiring places in former industrial scrubland!
Well done Chris 👏
There are still some eternal optimists among us who believe that Autumn Ladies Tresses won't be our last
#orchid
of the year....the most recent Ghost was found on 20th September 2009. 🤞
Epiphytic orchid at
@BBOWT
Dancersend! This Common spotted orchid was spied by eagle-eyed Zoe, one of the reserve volunteers, over 2m high in the fork of an ash tree. Now how did it find the right mycorrhiza up there?
@LeifBersweden
@BSBIbotany