Tag: Orchid

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Get a free Orchid Observers ID guide! | Orchid Observers

With the very last of the British orchids now in flower (Autumn lady’s-tresses), its your last chance this year to get hold of our orchid ID guide to learn where to find it and how to identify this beautiful species. If you don’t spot any flowers, you can still help out by identifying photos uploaded by others or by transcribing historical herbarium sheets from our collection.

Photo showing a few of the guides laid out on a table
Get your copy of the Orchid Observers guide for free while stocks last!

Printed copies of our 34-page Orchid Observers Identification Guide are now available free of charge while our stocks last. This beautiful guide is illustrated with photographs of all 29 wild orchids included in the study, as well as species distribution maps and details on flowering times.

If you would like a printed copy, please email orchid@nhm.ac.uk with your full postal address and we will pop one in the mail to you! They’ll be sent out until we run out of our stock, so if you don’t manage to get your hands on one of our printed copies, the guide is also available to download as a PDF.

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What to look out for in July | Orchid Observers

For July, the Orchid Observers team are simultaneously excited and fretting. We’re excited because we’re planning field trips to see the next orchids on our hit list, but we’re also concerned about the flower spikes scorching in the sun and wilting. It might be a race against the sun this month to catch July’s finest orchids. Not only that but this month’s highlight species are some of the trickiest to spot and identify. Please don’t let this deter you, take up the challenge and see if you can locate and photograph these beauties.

Bog orchid (Hammarbya paludosa)

The bog orchid (Hammarbya paludosa) is the tiniest of the UK orchid species. © Mike Waller.
The bog orchid (Hammarbya paludosa) is the tiniest of the UK orchid species. © Mike Waller.

Being the tiniest of the UK orchids, the bog orchid can be rather inconspicuous. It’s just 4-8cm tall and green and there are only 25 flowers on the flower spike, which are said to smell sweet and cucumber-like. Continue reading “What to look out for in July | Orchid Observers”

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Welcome to Orchid Observers, our new Citizen Science project | Orchid Observers

A new and exciting citizen science project has begun and it’s time to get involved with Orchid Observers! This research project, in partnership with Oxford University’s Zooniverse platform, aims to examine the flowering times of British orchids in relation to climate change.

In order to achieve this, we are inviting the amateur naturalist and professional botanical community, alongside nature loving citizens from across the country, to help us collect and sort orchid data.

The bog orchid (Hammarbya paludosa) is our smallest UK species.
The bog orchid (Hammarbya paludosa) is our smallest UK species. It usually grows on mountain peat bogs and can be found from July to August.

We want you to go out in the field and photograph any of 29 selected UK orchid species and upload your images onto our dedicated website, www.orchidobservers.org. Flowering times from each of your records will then be collated and compared with the extensive Museum herbarium collection, and data from the Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland (BSBI), totalling a 180-year-long time-series of orchid records.

Continue reading “Welcome to Orchid Observers, our new Citizen Science project | Orchid Observers”

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Introducing Mike Waller | Identification Trainers for the Future

Welcome to our series of posts introducing our trainees on the Identification Trainers for the Future project. We start with Mike Waller, who over the coming months will be working particularly on our Orchid Observers project:

Hello! I’m Mike – a wildlife fanatic and general all round naturalist from Wolverhampton where I’ve been based in between my years at Aberystwyth University studying Physical Geography. I graduated with a 1st Class Honours degree in 2013 and since then I’ve been immersing myself in anything wildlife orientated with the long-term goal of a career in conservation. Most notably, I spent last summer working with the superb team at RSPB Ynys-hir running the visitor centre and assisting with practical conservation work on the reserve.

ID Trainer for the Future Mike Waller, who has a keen interest in orchids
ID Trainer for the Future Mike Waller, who has a keen interest in orchids

In terms of my interests, I’ve always loved British wildlife in all its forms but I first specialised in birds, winning the RSPB’s ‘Young Birder of the Year’ award aged eleven. In the depths of winter I dragged my mum to the freezing coastal plains of Norfolk and Southern Scotland for geese and waders and watched garden birds for hours on end.

Continue reading “Introducing Mike Waller | Identification Trainers for the Future”