Remember the pink flower we found in Watergate Park. We had a great day out on Sunday visiting 17 gardens on the Hexhamshire Garden Trail in aid of St Helens Church at Whitley Chapel (more in next post). During a visit to Greenways garden, which was stunning, we spotted what we thought was the identical flower! John (a proper gardener) said it was an Orchid (Orchis Maderiaensis) and we thought we'd spotted a rarity on our doorstep! When we got home I emailed our local council with our photograph etc, and this is the reply we got: The photo is of a Northern Marsh Orchid (Dactylorhiza purpurella) which grows around the Gateshead area in undisturbed damp grasslands but also colonises recently reclaimed sites where there is a previous history of occurence. They normally flower early to mid June and this year flowered even earlier due to the warm spring we had. They are not planted by the Council but are genuinely native plants. Many thanks to Michelle at Gateshead Council for this information and others who suggested various names for the plant. I have personally never seen the orchid growing anywhere else in the wild, especially in Gateshead but I'll be 'orchid spotting' on every walk from now on, and we'll keep an eye on the two patches we found in Watergate Park to see if they colonise!
2 comments:
A Marsh Orchid. I never knew there was such a plant.
You'd be surprised where orchids can be found. A few years back I worked on Southampton Common, an ancient piece of common land about 20 minutes walk from the city centre. There are quite a few well-established patches of orchids across the common, including autumn ladies' tresses, broad-leaved helleborines and bee orchids (as well as the southern marsh orchid!). I used to get quite a buzz out of finding these beautiful plants on my doorstep and showing them off to friends.
Keep your eyes peeled, you never know what you may find right under your nose!
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