Homefield Wood

Orchid-filled meadows at Homefield Wood

On Wednesday, I visited Homefield Wood, near Marlow, for the first time. I'm a self-confessed amateur with all things orchids (and other plants), but keen nevertheless. My aim was to have a look at the Military Orchids that occur here with anything else a bonus, so I was pleasantly surprised (thrilled) to find the area teeming with Common Spotted Orchids of all shapes and sizes:

Quite a lot of Military Orchids in flower including some impressively-sized specimens. The vast majority were past their best (many well past), but some still in good condition:

Fly Orchid had always been a species I was keen to see and I'd read on Matt Eade's blog that he'd seen them at Homefield in late May. The vegetation had grown up considerably since then and no doubt most had already gone over; nevertheless found a few of these tiny but beautiful flowers. Again though, they were ever so slightly past their best.

 Somewhat embarassingly, Common Twayblade was a new one for me too:

...as was Greater Butterfly Orchid. There were three of these at the far end of the enclosure, one past its best but two still looking nice:

Finally, a few Chalk Fragrant Orchids were just starting to come in to flower:

Add to this a few Pyramidal spikes and it was a particularly productive couple of hours in which I had five orchid ticks! To top it all off, several Red Kites were lazily floating around in the (very) warm sunshine and a couple of Buzzards also showed well.