Another trip down into Kent in search of Orchids and it proved to be stunningly successful, although stopping just short of perfection. We had a plan, Man Orchids, Monkey Orchids, Late Spider Orchid and a few Flys. We left home at seven o'clock for what turned out to be a two and a half hour drive to our first site and we had all four in the bag by one o'clock - nearly! The nearly, being the Late Spider which we found but which was just three or four days short of flowering.
The first target was Man Orchid with our chosen site Darland Bank near Gillingham. It was our first visit to what proved to be a fantastic location but getting there, through the morning traffic, proved to be somewhat less than enjoyable. The journey taking us over an hour longer than planned.
We walked out on to the bank hoping to find a few specimens to photograph. Within a minute Dave had spotted the first flower. The numbers then rose quickly into the tens of, then hundreds of, and within half an hour to thousands of flowers. An unbelievable display but then, as we left, we were told by a local that we hadn't gone far enough to see the Man Orchid hotspot.
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| Man Orchid |
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| Man Orchid |
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| Man Orchid |
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| Man Orchid |
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| Man Orchid |
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| Man Orchid Floret |
As we left you couldn't help having a few concerns about the future of the site. It may be too steep for development purposes but it is surrounded by housing estates with more homes going up just below the bank. It's difficult to imagine this number of plants being wiped out but increasing use of the open ground for leisure purposes must be a worry.
We expected our second target, the Late Spider Orchid, to be the most challenging of the day. We had a general area in mind but it covered a few square miles. Detective work before we left home proved to be the key. A picture of a field found on a web search, a couple of hours of exploring miles of country lanes on Google Earth, in an attempt to match the configuration of bushes and trees and we had our location, or so we hoped.
It was perhaps the high point of the day when we walked into the field and found a few cages positioned to protect the orchids. It was quickly followed by a low point when we realised that none of them were in flower.
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| Late Spider Orchid - I assume. |
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| Tiny specimen emerging - not caged yet. |
I am assuming they are Late Spider Orchids but there is not enough detail here for me to be able to identify them. It looks like a return visit will be needed next week.
Final destination for the day was Park Gate Down. We had been here a week earlier and could see no sign of the Monkey Orchids. Today there were probably fifty or sixty showing in the first two fields.
The orchid is unusual in that the individual flowers open from the top, instead of the bottom as in most orchids. Whilst these flowers could only have been here for a week at most, there was already evidence of the tops of some of them starting to turn brown.
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| Monkey Orchid |
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| Monkey Orchid |
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| Monkey Orchid |
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| Monkey Orchid |
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| Monkey Orchid |
The Twayblades did not seem to have made much progress since we were here last week.
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| Twayblade |
Large numbers of Fly Orchids had also started to emerge in the third field. Many were tiny and you had to be careful where you were walking.
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| Fly Orchid |
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| Fly Orchid |
A great day out but I will to need to go back for the Late Spider. There was no way I could make the identification from the detail that we saw.
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