Spotted Orchids (better late than never)

I saw a few spotted orchids during a rainy walk yesterday, so I thought I would try to get a representative sample while the lowest flowers were just opening. In my opinion, this is when an orchid plant looks best: once the higher flowers are open, the lower ones can look very untidy and spoil the overall look. As usual, I will give my assessment of what species are present in each specimen, with rationale. The three 'species' photographed are Common Spotted Orchid (CSO), Heath Spotted Orchid (HSO) and Northern Marsh orchid (NMO). 

Characteristics used:

CSO has white to pink flowers with a clearly pointed centre lip and pointed outer lips

HSO has white to pink flowers with a continuous frilled lip and only a small point, if present

NMO has purple flowers with a smooth continuous lip. Flowerhead usually squat. Flowers earlier than the previous two species.

This first one looks to be pretty well 50/50 CSO/HSO due to the pale colour and the fringed outer lips with a spiked centre lip.

Common Spotted Orchid x Heath Spotted Orchid

This specimen looks to be pure CSO due to the three-pointed lip:

Common Spotted Orchid

This appears to have all three parents, with a central tooth, frilled outer lip and darker colour:

Hybrid Spotted Orchid

This appears to be mostly NMO, due to the darker colour and continuous, unfrilled, toothless lip, but the upper flowers are tending to pale and the spike is quite tall:

Hybrid Spotted Orchid

This paler specimen is mostly CSO, with a touch of HSO due to the slightly frilled/rounded outer lip:

CSO/HSO

This looks to be a very clean NMO, due to the short spike, already fully-open flowers, darker colour and continuous lip, but there is a tiny hint of frilling, so we have to consider some HSO:

NMO/HSO

A good, clean CSO (triple teeth with almost no frilling):

Common Spotted Orchid

This is clearly part CSO (long central tooth) and HSO (frilled outer lips):

CSO/HSO

Note that the central flower in the above spike is still rotating clockwise into its 'upright' position.

This last shot shows, I think, a triple hybrid between HSO, CSO and NMO. There is a clear frill round the lip, there is a central tooth and the colour is quite dark with a shorter spike:

Triple hybrid Spotted Orchid

I cropped that last shot to include the Heath Woodrush on the left.

Please note: the differentiation between Dactylorhiza orchids is contentious at best and uncertain at worst. I also believe that they tend to vary according to micro-habitat, with specimens with wet feet tending towards HSO and those with dry feet tending towards CSO. The variability in your area might well be different.

Orchids and grasses (and a moth)

My local Spotted Orchids have started to flower - albeit a bit later than usual. The three main 'species' that I have locally are:

• Common Spotted Orchid (CSO) - Dactylorhiza fuchsii
• Heath Spotted Orchid (HSO) - Dactylorhiza maculata
• Northern Marsh Orchid (NMO) - Dactylorhiza purpurella

These three freely hybridise with each other, and the hybrids back cross with the parents and with the other hybrids, so it is very rare to find a 'pure' or clean specimen anywhere: each specimen is likely to bear a component of each of the species in varying proportions. For that reason, the taxonomy of the two spotted orchids keeps changing, with them being variously described as species, subspecies or variants. But I just describe them all as hybrid spotted orchids. I recently had a long conversation with a leading orchid specialist, and when I asked him why we continue to try and name each specimen as A), B) or C), he said "it's just because we like to give different names to things that look different from each other, but really they're all hybrids".

I also have a suspicion that some of the variation is caused by the very local microclimate, for example if the orchid is standing in water or has dry feet. I generally find that specimens in water look more like HSO, but drier ones look more like CSO. The natural assumption is that HSO prefers water, and CSO does not, but if the water dries out for any reason, then the specimen that looked like HSO one year will look more like CSO the next year. I call these variations 'ecomorphs'.

Hybrid Spotted Orchid

That first one has features of CSO (the long tooth at the front lobe of the flower) and NMO (the overall colour is quite dark). The edges of the lip are slightly frilled, so there's some HSO in there, too.

And here's another:

Hybrid Spotted Orchid

That one has stronger frills and a paler colour, so I'd say 50/50 HSO and CSO.

These specimens were photographed at their best: the lower flowers have just opened and the higher flowers are still buds. When the flowers are all open, I think the plant looks less attractive.

I'll show more as I find them.

Grasses can be fun to identify, and the good news is that although the initial identification might be tricky, many species are readily identifiable in the field. One key feature is the 'ligule', which is formed where the leaf touches the stem:

Long, pointed ligule of Rough Meadow Grass - Poa trivialis

The long, pointed, ligule in the above specimen points us to Rough Meadow Grass - Poa trivialis.

Here's the grass:

Poa trivialis - Rough Meadow Grass

Crested Dogstail is easily identified by the one-sided nature of the seedhead (although I did manage to mis-identify it on another blog the other day):

Crested Dogstail

Cocksfoot is very recognisable:

Cocksfoot

While we're on Cocksfoot, I'll show this picture of one of the 'Minor' moths. There are three Minor species which are extremely difficult to separate, so unless we capture and kill them, we have to record them as 'Minor agg.':

Minor agg. moth

Minors use Cocksfoot grass as a food, living inside the stems when at the larval stage.

Yorkshire Fog must be the most common grass in this area: I find it in all but the wettest environments:

Yorkshire Fog

I just noticed the Rye-grass at the front left of the image.

The flowers of Meadowsweet have just opened and their perfume will dominate much of the hedgerow for the next couple of months:

Meadowsweet

Meadowsweet must be particularly nutritious: there are many species of insect and fungus which feed on all parts of the plant.

Now: hands up all those who ignored (or missed!) the Puccinia graminis rust on the Poa.

I was recently invited to talk about my blog by Nature Center Magazine. You can see the interview here. Thanks to Emma for that.

Nearing 1400 species

The Spotted Orchids are now well advanced, with many specimens to be seen in the right places. The first is a good 'clean' Common Spotted Orchid:

Common Spotted Orchid

This second specimen - which was growing very nearby - has features of both Heath Spotted Orchid (the frilly lower lip, with only a hint of a central tooth) and also Northern Marsh Orchid (the dark background colour)

Hybrid Spotted Orchid

As I was examining the orchids, I spotted an Eristalis hoverfly attempting to nectar. I realised I had to work quickly, so I rattled off a few shots, and was rewarded with this fine shot of the hoverfly with the attached pollinia from the orchid:

Eristalis hoverfly with orchid pollinia

The hoverfly has a short tongue, which means it has to force its head deep into the flower to attempt to reach any nectar. Unfortunately for the hoverfly, the nectar is located down a deep tube, and can only be reached by insects with a long tongue, so the attempt is always futile. But the pollinia, which contain the orchid's pollen, are very sticky and attach themselves to the hoverfly's face, causing the hoverfly to withdraw and fly off. It then flies off to another orchid and pollination takes place. I have occasionally seen hoverflies sitting on other plants, trying to remove the pollinia. Score: Orchids 1, Hoverflies 0.

The Willow Leaf Beetle Lochmaea caprea is very common on its host plant where the larvae cause extensive damage to the underside of the leaves:

Willow Leaf Beetle - Lochmaea caprea

The Devil's Coach Horse beetle - Staphylina olens - is one of a large and difficult family of beetles - the Rove Beetles.

Devil's Coach Horse Beetle

All beetles have a pair of wings that fold up inside an outer, hardened pair: the elytra. In the Rove Beetles the elytra are extremely short and the wings are folded several times to fit under their hard casings. I have marked the elytra in the picture above, and it is clear that some severe folding is required to pull the large wings into such a tiny space.

To give some idea of scale, the Willow Leaf Beetle would comfortably fit between the antennae of the Rove Beetle.


The wet early summer has been great for fungal rusts. Pucciniastrum epilobii is a common rust on Willowherbs; in this case Rosebay Willowherb:

Willowherb Rust - Pucciniastrum epilobii

New to me.

It's worth mentioning here that fungal parasites are a good indicator of close relationships between species: Rosebay Willowherb looks quite different from other members of the Epilobium family, but has the same fungal parasite.

Heath

This heathy area was under coniferous plantation until about 8 years ago, and the original flora and fauna are now slowly returning as the land reverts. Willows, heathers, rushes and mosses are the early colonisers, and these largely dictate which other species can be found.

Despite the awful month of May - during which it rained every day - most species are still a bit early this year, so I thought it was time to catch some Spotted Orchids before they reached full flower, when they are not nearly as attractive as they are in the early flowering stages.

This area has Spotted Orchids that cover the spectrum between Common Spotted Orchid and Heath Spotted Orchid, although the closely-related Northern Marsh Orchid that I showed last week is only about 1 kilometre away. These orchids all hybridise freely, and back-cross, so there cannot be any 'pure' specimens left. I can safely predict where I will find specimens that look most like Heath Spotted Orchid, and those are generally on the very edge of ditches, or even in lying water. I strongly suspect that the form of these hybrids is tightly governed by the micro-climate that they live in, and happily refer to all of these specimens as ecomorphs of hybrid Spotted Orchids. To that end I have started to give them a 'parentage percentage', which specifies how much of each of the parents I think are present in each specimen.

Here are a couple that I would place firmly in the Common Spotted Orchid camp, because the front lobe of the flower has a strong tooth:

Common Spotted Orchid

Common Spotted Orchid

The next pair have the outer sides of the flower more rounded and frilled, which sees some aspects of Heath Spotted Orchid creeping in. The spike is also often flatter:

Spotted Orchid

Spotted Orchid

I have included the next shot because it shows the rotation of the flower, which forms upside down, and then rotates into its upright position as it opens:

Spotted Orchid

I think that's my new favourite orchid photograph. Absolutely lovely.

The next shot shows an oddity that appeared in this location about 5 or 6 years ago:

White Bush Vetch

It's Bush Vetch, but rather than the normal blue/purple, it's purest white. When I first saw it, I suspected that some chemical dumping had taken place, but it has spread over the years and has jumped to an area that used to have the normal blue type. It's not unknown for blue or purple flowers to have white variants, and I'm told that this is more common in the west. Maybe the dampness has something to do with it.

Another few heath species have made returns. The first is Heath Milkwort, with the flower just opening:

Heath Milkwort

And my favourite Speedwell, Heath Speedwell, which forms tall, elegant spikes:

Heath Speedwell

The next two shots show two very closely-related micromoths, each about 5mm. long, and which are both leaf-miners on grasses. The first is Elachista luticomella:

Elachista luticomella

And the gorgeous Elachista argentella:

Elachista argentella

I spotted these ants attending their aphids on Willow:

Ants farming aphid for honeydew

Ants often 'farm' aphids, taking the exuded honeydew back to their nest, and protecting their aphids from attack by other species.

Summer mix

The Dog Rose on my hedge has opened, making a large patch of dusky pink. Roses attract all kinds of wildlife from aphids and beetles to micromoths and butterflies, and this picture shows the presence of two other life forms:

The two aphids to the lower left are 'mummified', which tells us that minute (2.5 mm.) parasitic wasps are present. These lay a single egg inside each aphid which then slowly hardens until it forms a protective shell around the developing wasp larva:

More parasitic behaviour can be seen in this shot of the shieldbug Troilus luridus consuming a moth caterpillar that it has caught:

Troilus luridus is scarce enough, and the only two specimens I have found were three years apart and on the same Hawthorn tree.

Still more predatory behaviour is shown by the structure of the proboscis of this Empis stercorea Dance Fly, which is used to suck nourishment from captured prey:

Spotted Orchids (Dactylorhiza sp. - I'm now refusing to identify these to species until someone admits they've got it wrong and says they're just variants of one or two species) have started to flower, and I think these earliest stages of development are the most attractive:

This one is paired with Common Sedge - Carex nigra:
This paper from 2004 puts it very nicely, allocating the various 'species' of Dactylorhiza into related 'groups'. Clearly much work has yet to be done in this area.

Moths continue to come to light. This is one of the few 'Minors' that can be satisfactorily identified without dissection: Middle-barred minor - Oligia fasciuncula - which is recognised by the dark 'box' with a thin white front border and a wider white rear border in the middle of the wing:

And two micromoths. Firstly Catoptria margaritella, which is thought to feed on mosses and then Cotton Grass:

And a rather worn specimen of Chrysoteuchia culmella, a grass feeder:

Round-up

The Spotted Orchids have reached maturity now, with nearly all the flowers open. I prefer them in the early stages, but I'm still delighted to have any at all.




This is the pupa of one of the Ladybirds. Due to the size (around 6 mm.) I'm plumping for 14-spot, but I have it in a container and I'll let it go once I've made the correlation.


Ringlets are a July species and I'm seeing a few every time I'm out. The underside shot shows clearly where the name comes from.


One of the labyrinthine twists in my personal history is that I failed latin at an early age and wasn't able to pursue my first choice career in biology - I went into computers instead. Nowadays I use more latin than most people. A couple of years ago I coined a (deliberately) bad piece of latin to announce my first encounter with the fungus Ergot. 'Cogito Ergot sum' : 'I think I have found some Ergot'.

It's the dark purple bit on the Sweet Vernal Grass, by the way.


This very small (10mm.) Tachinid is everywhere at the moment. Keep in mind that every Tachinid is produced at the cost of a moth or butterfly caterpillar, and I see tens - perhaps hundreds - of these flies every time I'm out.

Aphids in trouble again

I noticed that the Knapweed was covered in brown aphids, so I settled down to see if any female hoverflies came along. Sure enough, a female Episyrphus balteatus arrived and as soon as she spotted the aphids she started to lay. The aphids are in trouble, since her larvae will consume them by the hundred.


Sometimes she laid her eggs quite distant from the aphids (but always on the same plant). At other times she laid a lot closer:


Spiders are the major gap in my knowledge. I must start on them next year.

I was getting acquainted with emerging specimens of Angelica, in preparation for the July flowering, and I spotted this mine of Phytomyza angelicastri:


A couple of additional images of Dactylorhiza orchids with slightly unusual markings. This one has very vague nectar guides:


And this one has nectar guides which are much redder than usual: