2nd August 2023 Minera Quarry 

Virtually everything here has gone over now. The fleeting appearance of the Fragrant Orchids leaves just a few flowers, while Pyramidals and common Spotteds are but a memory. All that is left is the Broad-leaved Helleborines, and I want to check out that below the quarry face to the right of the main entry road. There is something different about these. I have said previously that someone commented that they had something of the Dutch Helleborine to them with paler leaves, crowded flower spikes and leaves squashed down low. Not as noticeable as those I saw a few years ago at Kenfig and Oxwich, but it may well be that these are features of growing in a more open habitat, making them geotypes, rather than varieties.

9th August 2024 Coalbrookdale 

Earlier this year it was reported that tree clearance had been done along Coach Road, and I was concerned that this may have detrimental effects on the Violet Heelborines there. As least for the firat year the extra light does not seem to have affected them, and indeed there look to be a few more for some would have been hidden by undergrowth. In fact it was nor so much tree clearance as bush and scrub clearance. However I hold back on saying this is successful. I suspect that in 2025 onwards there will be much more brambles and ferns hiding or suffocating the orchids. We will see. When the sun shone down on some of them, they positively glowed - not totally captured on camera.

13 August 2024 Severn Valley Country Park 

I came here in high hopes of a bountifull collection of Violet Heelborines after the recent hydrating rains rather plant shrivelling heat. Those hopes were dashed. There is now a fenced area called a Violet Helleborine refuge, where deer cannot get at them. Good idea? Well luckily there is a stile for entry but once inside you cannot get far without ripping your legs to pieces on brambles. The reserve is so overgrown!! I cannot find a single specimen in the places I could reach. I think that perhaps deer are need for the 9 months of the year without any VH in order to maintain the site. Outside the reserve the ground was passable, but still i find only a few VH and more gone over or withered before flowering. What is ANNOYING is that the noice says was created because in 2022 there were only 6 flowers. AHEM! read waht I said in 2022. I found 34 flowering spikes. This is another case of interfering with nature and everything turning out BAD.

Gop Hill 20th August 2024

Another disappointment. Should have been thousands of Autumn Ladys-tresses, but there a only hundreds. I blame the rain. Too wet for them, though the animal dung about the site suggests the possibility of many being eaten.  

And that is it for the year ..... apart from Richard Bates` rediscovery of the Ghost orchid on UK soil. Naturally the site is top secret. If I want to see one it should be by my own efforts, not retracing someone else`s footsteps. I do not mind doing that for other orchids, but the Ghost orchid is special. Hence I made a few trips to beech and oak woodland, both close to home and further south on the Shropshire - Herefordshire border. Of couse I didn’t find anything. Never thought I would, but as the climate this year has favoured this rarity I had to make some sort of small effort just in case/