Pyramidal...

A catch-up day today. Unfortunately when I'm really busy working, the rest of life carries on... Eventually I have to stop and deal with the piles of washing (three loads done today), the lawn-mowing and other domestic duties. I could really do with some kindly house elves at this time of year.

The lawn mowing progressed more slowly than normal, partly due to the warm sticky weather, and partly because I kept stopping to look at Russell crow, who's now constantly calling from the tops of the conifers, and is being carefully attended by both parents. They obviously didn't forget about their chick in his long absence.

At six o'clock I realised I'd been too busy to take any photographs. I went to pick up Pete from a nearby site and on the way back we stopped at Swaddywell Pit nature reserve to see if there were any pyramidal orchids Anacamptis pyramidalis flowering. There were swathes of them - a remarkable sight - but not easy to photograph in the strong breeze that was blowing across the open grassland.

The pyramidal orchid gets its name from the highly distinctive pyramid shaped head of bright pink flowers, which is very apparent in this specimen. It requires a specific fungus to be present in the soil in order to bloom, and numbers can vary wildly from year to year. It grows in chalk or limestone grassland and seems well able to colonise recent sites. The large meadow at the top of the reserve where it was growing was once a quarry and more recently a rubbish tip.

We also saw some bee-orchids in the grassland. John Clare, the famous eighteenth century poet who lived in nearby Helpston, wrote about bee-orchids on the site....

I've loved thee Swordy Well and love thee still
Long was I with thee tending sheep and cow
In boyhood ramping up each steepy hill
To play at 'roly poly' down - and now
A man I trifle o'er thee cares to kill
Haunting thy mossy steeps to botanise
And hunt the orchis tribes where nature's skill
Doth like my thoughts run into phantasys
Spider and bee all mimicking at will . . .

It's wonderful to see that the orchids have returned, despite the intervening quarrying...