I love plants. You do too, whether you’re in touch with your vegephilia or not. Everything you eat or smoke and practically everything you drape on your body or put in your car to make it go derives directoy or indirectly from the vegetable kingdom. Plants are part and parcel of our environment. In fact, [...]

Way back when I started my Anti-Global Warming Big Year I decided that if I flew somewhere and stayed there for more than a couple of days I could count the birds I saw there provided I offsetted the carbon that the flight produced.  So I counted a bunch of birds in California that I [...]

Just for a change I thought I’d take a field trip in the UK last weekend. And just for a change it wasn’t birds I was looking for, but orchids. Yes, occasionally a young man’s fancy turns to flowers and what better flowers to look for than orchids - those beautiful and exotic plants that [...]

When I was upstate this past weekend my Aunt Bonnie mentioned that she had come across a couple Jack in the Pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) in the woods near her house. I was intrigued as it had been years since I had seen one and they are such cool-looking plants, named for their likeness to [...]

If you are a person who reads this blog regularly you know that I recently moved to Queens and spend quite a bit of my spare time in Forest Park. It is near my apartment, it is beautiful, and it is a great place to see birds. Beyond that though, it is as [...]

This year, like most years, my father planted some Moonflowers (Ipomoea alba), hoping they would grow up the cedar trellises, built by my late grandfather, that stand against the railing on my folks’ back porch. And, unlike most years, he’s had a bumper crop of the giant, fragrant, nocturnal blossoms, topping out at 15 [...]

Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriacea) is an easily recognizable plant with a range that encompasses virtually all of North America east of the Rocky Mountains. It is one of over 140 species of milkweed, the genus Asclepias. Its common name comes from the white fluid released when the plant is harmed, and the scientific name derives [...]

Ringwood State Park in northern New Jersey is about as close as you can get to New York and not cross the border. A Saturday afternoon there with Daisy and her family was a stomach-stuffing experience of monumental proportions. We had a good time and enjoyed the outdoors, the company, and did I [...]

Clattinger Farm (Wiltshire Wildlife Trust Reserve)
April 2007
Green-winged Orchids are named for the broad greenish veins that mark the sepals and appear most years at the end of April, flowering through to early June (though these particular plants flowered in mid-April: April 2007 was both the driest and warmest ever recorded in the UK). Dependent [...]

Morgan’s Hill, Wiltshire Wildlife Trust Reserve
05 July 2006
 

The North Wessex Downs - once the scene of a fierce battle between Roundheads and Cavaliers during the Civil War.
 

Morgan’s Hill Wiltshire Wildlife Trust Reserve - near the entrance
 

On the edge of the North Wessex Downs is the small but beautiful Wiltshire Wildlife Trust Reserve of Morgan’s Hill [...]

Bird’s Nest Orchid Neottia nidus-avis
Hampshire, UK. June 2006
 
The Birds Nest Orchid, a somewhat unusual orchid found primarily in Beech woods, is a sacrophyte - a plant without chlorophyll which lives on decayed vegetation (in fact the plant lives in partnership (symbiosis) with a fungus which which lives in the matted “birds nest” of roots [...]

Britain’s Orchids - David Lang (WILDGuides 2004)
Reviewed June 2006
 
Let’s be honest right from the start of this review: Britain is not blessed with an overwhelming variety of orchids and coming to them new is not so daunting as starting looking at moths, for example: there are just (depending on current taxonomy) 51 species of [...]

Fly Orchid Orchis insectifera, Bee Orchid Orchis apifera, and Fly x Bee hybrids
Somerset and Hampshire, UK. June 2005 and 2006
 
Fly Orchids are rather slender plants found typically in the Beech woods of Kent and Surrey, and less often in dry grassland and scrub on calcareous soils. Locally common in southern England and on Anglesey [...]

Pyramidal Orchids Anacamptis pyramidalis
UK, June 2005 and June-July 2006

Pyramidal Orchids are one of the most widespread and familiar members of the orchid family in the UK, mainly because they can be abundant on chalk downs, dune slacks, seaside golf links, cliff tops and on limestone pavements, and are often seen in large groups on roadside [...]

Most orchids in the UK grow from late-May to the end of July: it’s a narrow window, and as it tends to rain heavily here most summers (when was the last time that the Wimbledon Tennis Championship ran to schedule, for example) if the sun shines anyone wanting to see them needs to get out [...]

Burnt Orchid Orchis ustulata
Hampshire, UK. 05 June 2006
 
Most orchids in the UK grow from late-May to the end of July: it’s a narrow window, and as it tends to rain heavily here most summers (when was the last time that the Wimbledon Tennis Championship ran to schedule, for example) if the sun shines anyone wanting [...]

Noar Hill Nature Reserve
Hampshire, UK. 08 June 2006
 

My good friend Peter Mowday and I went east into Hampshire to three sites fairly close to each other in the South Downs: Chappetts Copse, a truly beautiful beech wood renowned for its colony of Narrow-leaved Helleborines, Noar Hill, an ancient system of chalk quarries famous for large [...]

Monkey Orchid Orchis simia, Lady Orchid Orchis purpurea, and possible Monkey x Lady hybrid
Oxfordshire, UK. 30 May 2006
 
Today the rain finally stopped long enough for Peter Mowday (long-time friend) and I to catch up with a few of the UK’s orchid species - which for years now we’ve been promising ourselves to do.

We drove down [...]