06/06/2018 Barnack Hills & Holes National Nature Reserve, Peterborough

Chalk Fragrant Orchid: (Gymnadenia conopsea) From the busy road side verge of the B6403 I headed down to a little gem of a nature reserve in Barnack situated about 11 km north west of Peterborough.

I was tipped off by @ukorchids via twitter, who said this was top place to see man orchids. I highly recommend people to follow, great information and lots of sharing of orchid images

Arising from the rubble of a medieval quarry, the Hills and Holes is one of Britain's most important wildlife sites with grassy slopes are home to a profusion of wildflowers.

Barnack's rich flora supports a wide variety of wildlife, especially insects, and a number of nationally scarce species are found. But the star of the show are its rich diversity of flowers, with over 300 species recorded on site.

While here I spotted dozens of fragrant orchid all well sign posted and many behind several non-go areas.

Formerly the common fragrant orchid, marsh fragrant orchid and heath fragrant orchid were classified together. They were then separated into three sub-species before their current recognition as three distinctly different species.

The species do align with the habitats indicated by their name grassland, Barnack Hills & Holes is a chalk grassland so we have chalk fragrant orchids.

The site is especially famous for the Pasque flower, a purple anemone that blooms in large numbers in spring, unfortunately I was too late to see them in all their glory as they had gone to seed when I arrived.

Although I missed the Pasques I did spot horseshoe vetch, common rockrose, hairy rockcress, dropwort and the very strange looking knapweed broomrape. 

Man Orchid: There were plenty of man orchid about too, many of which were looking past their best.

Loved this place, I spoke to several locals who were lovely.

06/06/2018 Duke's Covert & Copper Hill, Lincolnshire

Man Orchid: (Aceras anthropophorum) These exquisite flowers are quite anthropomorphic as beneath the hood of the flower the lip hangs down split into a pair of arms and legs. The hood is yellow-green and the lip or the stick mans body is yellow and sometimes edged in red.

Defiantly one of my favourite British orchid species, I have a soft spot for the more orchids but maybe more so for the less flashy, bright orchids and maybe there is something more to be said for the understated orchids that tend to blend in a bit more.

Either that or the fact that being a huge sci-fi geek all I see is tiny green men in space helmets.

It's particularly difficult to see man orchids up north as they have a very southerly distribution with Lincolnshire being at the very edge of their northerly rage.

This is an orchid that enjoys short alkaline grasslands and is most often found growing full sun or mid-shade, but the man orchid is also known to be found occasionally along the edges of open woodland and in scrubby areas.

Lincolnshire has two main sites where you can see man orchids and one site is a small grass verge near Ancaster, this small area falls under the Duke's Covert & Copper Hill nature reserve’s boundary and is a protected area.

This area is protected under Lincolnshire’s Protected Roadside Verge Scheme, so is safe from the councils mowers.