Early- purples definately plant of the month!

Well done everyone who has been searching the target woods for Early- purples.


This is a screen shot of the recent adnoto submitted records showing a good coverage.




Chris will be adding these records to the database to give an overall map of Early-purples in the county.
Contrast this species with Green-winged orchid described by John Dony in his flora of 1953 as "Frequent....on calcareous soils throughout the county...becoming scarcer..increased ploughing of grassland". Chris`s  2011 flora has recent ( 1987 - 2006) records from 7 tetrads.

We are down to 4 in 2012/13 as one of these recent records was made in 2012. We can only hope that with increases in field edge grassland in agri-environment schemes that Green-winged can make a comeback.
If you know of any likely grassland that is flower rich..perhaps in your local churchyard, common or orchard now would be a good time to have a look.
Good hunting as always.
Graham

Early Purples..an excellent year so far

After the last request to look for Early -Purple Orchids especially in woods with no recent records we have received records from 17 main locations; four of them in the target woodlands of Chicksands, Flitwick, Salem Thrift and Kempston Woods.
Thanks to everyone who have gone out to have a look.There is still plenty of time to go and see EPO`s.
Potton Wood takes the prize as best EPO wood so far with over one thousand plants recorded by Ian Woiwood ..so far!!

keith found a nicely coloured specimen showing that they do vary in colour.

Do send me a zero record if you have visited any woodlands but failed to find any. Its all good information!

The Beds Green-winged Orchids have done well this year also, but none have been reported from Fancott meadow- an old stronghold for the species.

It looks like flowering of other species will be late this year after the late cold weather and flowering of species normally seen in late May may not be seen until June.

Shoots of Common Spotted, Twayblade, Butterfly, White Helleborine and Fly Orchid have been spotted so there is plenty to look for.

The known colony of Bird`s-nest orchid has been reported to be beneath a pile of logs this year!. This Orchid has no chlorophyll and so relies on its fungus association for its food. It can be difficult to find!
Richards photo may help you spot them.

 Most recent sightings for Bird`s - nest  are King`s wood Heath and Reach (SP92J), Aspley Wood (SP93H),  Dungee Corner ((SP9359) and  Odell Great Wood (SP59); but any ancient wood or wood on or close to the chalk will be worth a look. They can be found in the darkest part of woods with little other ground vegetation and quite a lot of leaf litter.

Good luck

 

 

Early-purple Orchid  is now out.

 

Here is a list of locations compiled by Chris Boon that have had EPO`s in the past but not recorded recently. If you are close to these woods now is the time to enjoy the bluebells and have a good look round.

 

Sadly Cainhoe wood is no more...one of the last ancient woodlands to be felled and cleared in Beds.

Flitwick wood used to have an attractive white form of EPO, do go and look to see if it can be refound.

 

 

Wood	Tetrad	Last    Date
Blackgrove Wood	SP93R	1950
Salford Wood	SP94F	1995
Holdot Wood	SP94K	1979
Marston Thrift	SP94Q	1953
Kempston Wood	SP94Y	1985
Hanger Wood	SP94Z	1987
Dungee Wood	SP95J	1993
Park Wood	SP95J	1993
Hardwick Spinney	SP95Q	1953
Salem Thrift	SP95V	1986
Barwick Wood	SP96Q	1981
Great Hayes Wood	SP96Q	1986
Flitwick Wood	TL03H	1988
Claphampark Wood	TL05L	1994
Lady Wood, Melchbourne	TL06H	1989
Keysoepark Wood	TL06L	1997
Cainhoepark Wood	TL13D	1992*
Chicksands Wood	TL14A	1995
Waterloo Thorns	TL15V	1987
Cockaine Hatley Wood	TL25Q	1991

 

NB The tetrads given above are for location on Ordnance Survey maps. Several sites are in more than one tetrad and we need 6 0r 8 fig grid references for the orchid locations as we wish to plot the data at a resolution of 1km grid squares.

*Wood felled…old field edges still have large trees.

 

Chris has also updated the map for EPO showing the new adnoto records to date.

 

We look forward to a rush of records! Happy Hunting.

Graham

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Emerging Twayblades..watch out for the teeth!

The poor weather continues with the coldest March for fifty years.
However our orchids are starting to send up shoots and the spotted leaves of the early purples have been recorded from Potton wood.

Twayblades are also just appearing as stubby green shoots, usually to be found in woodland and scrubby areas but also grassland.  Those seen on the last day of March were about 2cm high.

 On first glance the shoots look similar to the emerging leaves of Lords and Ladies or arum lilly that grows in the same habitat.
Twayblades usually have just one pair of broad leaves, although some may have one or more than two. The emerging leaves are rolled together and have a distictive "fang" at the apex. The arum shoots have only one rolled leaf that looks like a shoot as it emerges and although with a pointed apex lacks the "fang".

So with care  have a go and record twayblade shoots, it is useful in situations where deer or rabbits nip the shoots off and so become hard to see once the other vegetation has grown up.
Good hunting!

Twayblade shoot at Sewell in March. Showing rolled pair of leaves and "fangs"



Twayblade shoot at Sewell in March from above showing rolled pair of leaves and "fangs"

Arum shoots at Sewell in March showing single rolled leaf with pointed apex but no "fangs"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bee Orchids 

Tetrad map of bee orchid up to March 2013. Bedfordshire

19 new Tetrad records have been made since the begining of the Bedfordshire Orchid Survey. Altogether 38 bee orchid locations have been sent in using the Adnoto recording system devised by Keith Balmer of our record centre. The records give location details of over 700 plants so far. Well done everyone who have sent in records, please keep them coming.

There is still plenty of time to spot bee orchids leaves so do visit your local road verge or even your lawn and have a good look.

Other winter green species have been located including green winged at Studham, man at Totternhoe and frog at Whipsnade.

EPO`s

Late March into April is a good time to begin to visit local woodlands to look for leaves of the early purple orchid. These are our earliest flowering orchid along with the green winged, and can be found in woodland and grassland, but most usually in old woodland, particularly those with bluebells.

Early purple orchid in Potton wood

The leaves are usually well spotted with purple blotches and spots, although unspotted plants may occur. The leaves are glossy green and the spots and blotches although often circular tend to be elongated along the leaf.

Early purple orchid leaves

They may be confused with other spotted leaf orchids particularly common spotted which tend to have non glossy leaves and when they are spotted tend to have elongated spots across the leaf; but this is not foolproof!

Common spotted orchid leaves

Early purples are one of the plants when found in woodland that indicates that woodland has long been present in that locality so many other plants of interest may be present.

Do let us know how you are getting on, we hope  for and look forward to a busy and enjoyable spring and early summer. Good luck!

There was a very good turn out to the meeting in Haynes yesterday evening. Around 80 people gave up the TV to hear about the proposed Wild Orchids of Bedfordshire book and the two years of survey needed to check old locations and look for new ones.

Chris Boon introduced us to the current knowledge on orchid distribution in Bedfordshire captured in his award winning new flora. Records for the flora were up to 2006 so with the two years of the current survey we will be dealing with an extra eight years of records. Chris showed distribution maps of several orchids, some like the bee orchid apparently expanding its range while others like butterfly orchid and birds nest orchid have reduced alarmingly.

Graham Bellamy introduced the Adnoto orchid recording form developed by Keith Balmer of the Bedfordshire and Luton Biodiversity Recording and Monitoring Centre (BRMC). see  http://www.bedscape.org.uk/BRMC/newsite/index.php   The orchid recording Adnoto forms can be found on the Beds. Natural History Society (BNHS) at http://www.bnhs.org.uk/  and are easy to use, especially in getting the grid reference for your records. We would like to know details of the fate of orchid flowering plants, particularly the rarer ones and those in decline. Do the flowers all get eaten off?.. do they set seed or not? If they are not setting seed then this would be a major and obvious factor in their decline. These observations can be added to the Adnoto forms.

After a break for refreshments and looking at books, chatting and signing up to offer help with the field work Richard Revels showed some excellent pictures of orchids and orchid habitats in Bedfordshire. Richard is keen to know of any rarities or hybrids that turn up so that he may photograph them for the book.

The next stage is for the offers of help to be collated and acknowledged, field trips to be organised and for ernest preparation for the coming field season.

Many people can usefully survey their local patches, areas they walk frequently and perhaps visit other areas close by that may hold orchid interest. Orchids can occur on your lawns, road verges, churchyards and even recreation grounds. The BRMC web site has a good link to Accessible Wildlife Sites in the county and these may be visited at any time. There are around 200 of these AWSs, many of them nature reserves. Do send in any orchid records you have, old and new, we found that people have knowledge that  was assumed we knew about, please err on the side of caution and tell us about your finds.

The BNHs have two field outings to look for orchids, one to West Wood on the 23rd May and the second to Pegsdon Hills on the 1st of June..further details to come.

Reminder that there is the first meeting of the Bedfordshire Orchid Group at haynes mission Hall tonight (Wednesday 30th January) at 7.30.

An interesting link to orchid conservation is the work being done at Kew with the Sainsbury Orchid Conservation Project http://www.kew.org/science/sainsbury_trial.html

Many orchid populations are declining and some are so few that it is thought that pollinators are no longer attracted to them.Seeds of orchids are being grown and plants put back out into nature reserves to boost numbers.