The Orchid Trail

I've always associated orchids with the wilds of the Ridgeway, or hidden Welsh valleys, but this year we have orchids on the doorstep! I am very excited by this and keep trying to drag people to see them. We have had a possibly serendipitous series of events which might have contributed to seeing orchids. Firstly we have encouraged a reduction in grass cutting on our open green spaces, in an attempt to rewild certain areas across South Swindon Parish, this will become easier once the parish have taken over control of all the grass cutting, also we have spent more time walking locally and last winter was very wet.
As you can imagine, one person's wonderfully rewilded area is a haven for wildlife, while for others it's a mess and a sign that the area is not being looked after properly. For this reason, the parish will be asking residents for recommendations of areas they would like to be left unmown until quite a lot of the wild flowers in the sward have flowered. These areas will have to be mown at least once a year to enable them to remain healthy.
This year, we picked an area of grass at the entrance to Lakeside to leave uncut, and the embankment on Marlborough Lane was also left unmown, although there was a strip at the edge cut to show it was intentionally left like that. Imagine my excitement when I was told that there were two clumps of pyramidal orchids in that area. Here is one of the clumps near the old oak tree:
 Seen from a distance they are spectacular, and it's fascinating to wonder what they have been doing when subjected to years of mowing. After one spring of not mowing, we have two clumps of orchids, and while they are classed as 'common' they aren't common so close to home normally.
From Marlborough Lane, if you go along Pipers Way, and then up onto the former tip near Nationwide, you come across a greater selection of orchids in wild meadowland. This one below is a Common Spotted orchid, recognisable and distinct from the other one by spots on it's leaves and a longer flower spike. It seems to fade, but the photo below of another one shows how spectacular they are when close up
 close up
The third sort of orchid seen on the trail was a bee orchid, obviously named because it looks like a bee., and not as common as the other two.
I took lots of photos of orchids, but realise they are hard to appreciate. I'll include a photo showing the whole stem of a bee orchid:
 Now all three together:
I realise I need a better camera than the mobile phone one for photographing orchids.
 I'll add a few more photos of orchids in grassland:

 I liked this pyramidal one:
 They do look great in with the daisies:
 And this is the last one, with sun on the common spotted orchids.



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