Green-winged Orchid...

Up and out early to continue with the woodland surveying - it hardly feels like work in such glorious spring weather. On my way to todays' wood I made a quick detour into Upwood meadows NNR, as I'll be surveying this in about a month's time and wanted to see how things were progressing, after such a slow start to the season.

I managed to find and photograph mousetail, a rather scarce annual weed which is no more than a couple of centimetres in height. Last time I visited it was in leaf, but the surrounding area was partially flooded.This time the mud was dry and cracked, and many of the seedlings had disappeared, but I found a handful of plants clinging to life in a damp corner.

Upwood Meadows is renowned for its population of green-winged orchids, but only the first few were coming into flower. This is an iconic species of neutral to calcareous grassland, occurring in both in hay-meadows and grazed pastures. It was once widespread in southern and eastern England, but like so many grassland species, its numbers have been devastated by agricultural management, including ploughing of old grassland and use of artificial fertiliser and herbicides. In Cambridgeshire it is only found at a very small number of sites, most of which are either nature reserves or Sites of Special Scientific Interest.