As promised

Here, as promised, is a picture taken this morning of the Early purple orchid coming into flower.

Early purple orchid coming into flower

 
There were at least half a dozen others in the area, and here is one whose flowers are more fully opened. Sorry for the blurriness – I have no idea why it happened – but at least the picture gives you more of an idea of the colour and shape of the individual flowers.

A blurred but closer picture of an Early purple orchid. Note the petal that looks like a tongue hanging down

At first glance you might mistake the plant for a reddish Bluebell, especially as the two of them come out at the same time and grow in similar places. The Early purple orchid however stands upright; it doesn’t have the graceful droop of (English) Bluebells.* 

The graceful droop of the English Bluebell

 
Also, the flowers are a completely different shape. The Bluebell, as you might expect, has a frilled bell-shape whereas orchids have a sort of tongue hanging down. (In some, like the Bee and Fly orchids, the tongue actually looks like the insect they are trying to attract.)

The frilled bell-shape of Bluebell flowers

My beloved Oxford Book of Wildflowers, published in 1960, and given to me by my parents for my birthday in 1964, says that the Early purple orchid is ‘common in woods and meadows throughout Britain’. I fear this is no longer so. All you can say is that it is the least rare orchid.


*The Spanish bluebell, found in gardens, is fatter and it doesn’t droop – it looks more like a hyacinth. Sadly, it is prone to escaping from gardens and taking over in the wild from our more subtle version. Why, oh why, do we persist in filling our gardens with foreign plants? (The subject of another post/rant maybe.)

Spanish bluebells in our garden, planted before I knew any better. So far it's confined itself to the flowerbed where I put it.