Early Purple Orchid (Orchis mascula) flowers

After picking up Helena with all her stall items when the Shambles market closed, I made a cup of tea and then decided to drive up to the common. I’d been about to go there at lunchtime but a sudden deluge made me reconsider.

As I set off it started to rain again but it was half-hearted and by the time I’d driven up the valley from Brimscombe and reached the edge of Minchinhampton Common near Tom Long’s Post, the rain ceased and the sky lightened. I parked in a different place to our usual spot as I was put off by a man playing with his electric remote-controlled toy car. I hope it was ignorance that made him use that area of fine natural grassland, which is protected by the National Trust as a safe haven for countless skylarks to nest on the ground.

I hoped to see skylarks, and I did, although they were not as easy to spot today under the cloudy sky. As soon as I left the car I could hear them singing high up above me, and did watch several of them hovering and then swooping to dive back to earth. their sound was a delight as always.

I turned my attention to some cows I spotted across the common and headed towards them. The cows which graze this common land in summer, as part of its natural cultivation as a traditional limestone grassland, were released onto the land a week ago. I hoped to see some of the highland cattle but they weren’t in the herd I’d observed.  In fact I was surprised by the small number of cows on this main section of the common. I’ll have to come back for them.

On my walk from the car I spotted some wild cowslips amongst the buttercups and other plants. As I approached them in order to take some pictures of theme nestling in the grasses I saw this purple orchid. It looked a bit bedraggled and I assumed that the cows may have trodden on them in their wanderings. There were a few other orchids, but they were all quite small. I lay down to get this picture nto knowing their common name.

Having prepared the pictures I searched online to find their name. It appears that they are simply called early Early Purple Orchids (Orchis mascula) but of more interest to me is the fact that they always flower amidst Common Cowslips (Primula veris), which I can now verify. Unfortunately I didn't know that at the time or I would have tried to photograph them close to each other.

EDIT:
I changed the picture. The current one was taken as I prepared to go home, as a shaft of sunlight illuminated the darkening scene for about thirty seconds. I'd waited a long time for such sunshine to wander across the landscape. The flare in the background is a reflection off a windscreen of a car crossing the common near Tom Long's Post