Orchids

Wildlife-Walks_Arthur-Turner_Dactylorhiza-Fuchsii

The Common Spotted orchid is the most common of all UK orchids and you are most likely to see it in bloom between June and August.

It grows in many habitats including woodland, roadside verges, hedgerows, old quarries, sand dunes and marshes.

The meadow at Allt-yr-yn is the perfect place to see a carpet of delicate, pale pink spikes.

The Common Spotted orchid gets its name from its leaves which are green with abundant purplish oval spots and which form a rosette at ground level before the flower spike appears.

The flowers range from white and pale pink through to purple, but have distinctive darker pink spots and stripes on their three-lobed lips and are densely packed in short, cone-shaped clusters.

Other orchids you may see in Newport include the Bee orchid, a beautiful, striking orchid which sometimes pops up on roadside verges, and the Southern Marsh orchid which likes slightly damper conditions.

Many orchids rely on a special relationship with fungi in order to germinate and grow.

When the conditions are right the fungus grows a very fine thread called a hypha which penetrates the orchid seed, through which it passes nutrients to enable the orchid to grow.

While some orchids will respond to a number of different fungi, some are dependent on specific species of fungus and cannot germinate without the presence of that particular fungus.

This results in orchid seed lying dormant for many years, waiting for the conditions to be right, and so orchids can suddenly appear where they have not been seen before.

Conversely, after many years of regular growth, orchids have been known to disappear from sites, as the soil conditions become less favourable.