Avez-Vous un Cuppa?

Meeting up with Sean Cole, Len (or Bernard Manning for short) and Stan the Man in Swadlincote in the early morning of Sunday(well actually 7.00am) and after a few hours driving it wasn't long before we hit the magical county of Dorset. The targets for the day included another "mutant" Bee Orchid in the form of the rare variety of Atrofuscus , Smooth Snake , Lesser Butterfly Orchid , Sand Lizard and to finish off the day Bog Orchid in the New Forest. First stop was Radipole RSPB for the Var.atrofuscus Bee Orchid which had been identified the previous week. Meeting with a group of fellow orchid twitchers along the footpath, the two plants were quite easy to find and after a quick chit-chat I took a number of photos of the orchid. After Radipole, we drove over to Hartland Moor NNR,near Wareham for the target species Smooth Snake, Sand Lizard and Lesser Butterfly Orchid. Over the next couple of hours of searching the nearby heathland we connected with a corking femal...

As the Bee Orchids are know in flower in Leicester I took a few more photos of this beautiful orchid. Looking at the flower itself it might possible that these flowers are actually the very rare form Var. Atrofuscus and potentially the second record ever for the UK!!! I informed my fellow orchid twitcher Sean Cole about these possible rare forms and he joined me later in the afternoon and came to the same conclusion as myself after viewing the orchids. The only problem now is that I will just have to wait and see what the BSBI orchid recorder thinks of them? I will keep you posted on the developments?