Bog Orchid

I wasn't going to do a blog about finding the Bog Orchid. It's such an insignificant little plant and the pictures are not that exciting. However, this is a diary of my sightings "both interesting and not so interesting" and when I thought about the work that had gone into finding them and the luck that rescued our day, it had to have a blog to itself.

You could say that nothing much happened on Wednesday. We drove down to the New Forest, photographed the Bog Orchid and came home. Nothing else of interest and no other pictures. That takes no account of the research that went into identifying the locations where we might look for the orchid. The six hours we spent bog hopping, head down looking for the plant. The difficulty of spotting such a small, green orchid, in amongst the much taller growth and the difficulty of staying focussed on the search whilst butterflies, dragonflies and birds offered such good viewing opportunities.

Sad to say, after our six hours searching all we had was eyestrain. Our starting location around Hatchet Pond looked the most promising of the day. All the indicator plants were there, the conditions looked right, but we couldn't pick up any sign of the orchid. Other locations produced similar results. We ended up searching an area around Stoney Cross with similar negative results.

Having had enough we decided to head for home and were walking back to the car. Then you see someone in smart cream trousers kneeling down in a big area of wet mud seemingly trying to bury his head into the ground. It has to be a mad man, either that or he had found an orchid (only half mad).

The couple had in fact found about a dozen Bog Orchids and in a place that we would not have searched. Why they should grow there and not in all the ideal locations we had been searching I will never know but then that is the joy of orchid hunting.

We had an interesting discussion with them and did thank them for rescuing our day but I failed to get their names. So if they read this our thanks again for helping us out.

Lucky or what? We were all set for a really depressing ride home.