Aston Clinton Ragpits
A wonderful wildlife experience of chalkland flowers including greater butterfly-orchids and thousands of fragrant orchids.
A wonderful wildlife experience of chalkland flowers including greater butterfly-orchids and thousands of fragrant orchids.
Annual Early Purple Orchid Count and Wildflower Survey led by Colin Miles.
Join warden Phil Townsend to explore this jewel of a wildlife site and discover its chalk grassland flowers and butterflies.
The bee orchid is a sneaky mimic - the flower’s velvety lip looks like a female bee. Males fly in to try to mate with it and end up pollinating the flower. Sadly, the right bee species doesn’t…
Annual meadow-grass is a coarse, vigorous grass that can be found on waste ground, bare grassland and in lawns. In some situations, it can be considered a weed.
This unassuming orchid is easily overlooked. It is found patchily across the UK, but has been declining for decades.
The Early purple orchid is one of the first orchids to pop up in spring. Look for its pinkish-purple flowers from April, when bluebells still carpet our woodland floors. Its leaves are dark green…
The petals of the rare Lizard orchid's flowers form the head, legs and long tail of a lizard. They are greenish, with light pink spots and stripes, and smell strongly of goats! Spot this tall…
The pyramidal orchid lives up to its name - look for a bright pinky-purple, densely packed pyramid of flowers atop a green stem. It likes chalk grassland, sand dunes, roadside verges and quarries…
A short, but pretty plant of unimproved grasslands, the Green-winged orchid gets its name from the green veins in the 'hood' of its flowers. Look for it in May and June.
This is probably the most widespread and commonest of the marsh orchids.
The Bird's-nest orchid gets its name from its nest-like tangle of roots. Unlike other green plants, it doesn’t get its energy from sunlight. Instead, it grows as a parasite on tree roots, so…