Burnt-tip Orchid (Neotinea ustulata): After spending the morning surveying close to Milton Keynes I decided to make the most of my time down in this part of the world and hunt down dome special orchids.
Just north of the Chilterns is a small area of flowery chalk grassland known for supporting the only population of burnt-tip orchids to be found in Bedfordshire.
Knocking Hoe is also famous for more rare stuff including moon carrot, spotted catsear, field fleawort, burnt tip orchid and pasque flower
As soon as I reached reserve, parking in the nearby Hexton Car Park and walking back along the public footpath towards the reserve entrance I soon found myself climbing a chalk hill.
The specials of the site are the Burnt tip Orchids, found in small mesh protected enclosures, but a few rouges can be found outside this enclosure, all were marked with a red flag.
These were my first ever burnt-tips and was particularly surprised by their diminutive size.
It is so-called because the unopened flowers at the top of the flowering spike are dark purple appearing burnt while the opened flowers at the base of the spike are white or pale pink with raised purple spots.
These beautiful little orchids have seen one of the severest declines of all wild orchids during the last 50 years and is now very rare. A special flower that likes tightly grazed chalk grassland but has seen farming practices change with more areas being ploughed and the cusession of grazing livestock.
Looks like I got lucky too, the weather has been particularly dry and hot, there was even talk of a hosepipe ban on the radio during my journey down. The dry weather has sped up their flowering stage and many were on the way to going over and looking brown aroudn the edges.
I managed to find the last few in looking splendid.
