Early Purple Orchid

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 We are fortunate to live next door to the Waitby Greenriggs Nature Reserve which is Nationally important for its wild orchids. I confess that I find it fiendishly difficult to distinguish between the different species. One has to look at the leaves and then the various parts of the flower  and the colour to accurately identity these. It helps if you know what species appear at what time and on what soil type so that you can narrow the field a bit. The first orchid we usually come across hereabouts is the early purple and I think that this is what I have in the photograph.


Apparently this plant smells sweetly of honey to start with, and once pollinated smells like cat's pee as signal  to pollinators that it has already been visited. My sense of smell has deserted me so I will have to trust the books on this one. The leaves are spotted, numerous and blunt. The flower has a three lobed "lip" and there is a "spur" that points upwards. Buff tailed bumblebees are the main pollinators. This plant ranges in height between 10 and 60 cm but are on the small side of that range in this area.

Diary
We had three separate sightings of the female stoat in the garden yesterday. I saw a couple of orange tip butterflies in the meadow. We are getting a lot of visits from the great spotted woodpecker at the moment.
Camera traps last night showed a fox and a roe deer (female) in the bog meadow. It is still disappointingly cold and wet.




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