There’s a couple of good orchid places close to hostel, so it was natural that I would start my morning there. Except, I had a slight disagreement with the book again so I skipped the first one, it just wasn’t worth figuring out why they want to me park all the way over there and then walk back on the road to… whatever obscure point they thought I should take over the barbed wire fence. Anyway, it was considerably more easy to find the second spot, and now I made a new discovery – the early marsh orchid ssp. ochroleuca (Dactylorhiza incarnata ssp. ochroleuca). I was also happy to see more of the marsh helleborine, it really is one beautiful orchid.

After Grodvät, I continued up to the northern tip of the Gotland main island. The wind was really beating the flowers and I had to stretch my patience almost to the limit to get a picture of something that may or may not have been an early marsh orchid. With hindsight, it was. And it was everywhere – I’ve never seen so many. Sadly, not many other orchids to be see, I think I was half blind because of all the purple flowers.

My feet were already starting to get tired, I guess I hadn’t quite recovered from yesterday and I’m a little bit out of shape (or a lot). So I decided that I will only do one more excursion today, and it had to be something that doesn’t require a long hike. Checking my notes, I found a promising spot and sure enough, it produced right away – a serendipity if there ever was one. Already when I got out of the car, I saw two people scanning the ground. So I walked up to them and asked if they had seen anything interesting, they confirmed what I had already noticed myself, it was very dry so the flowers are not so plentiful. As I was talking with them, I saw something bright green in the corner of my eye and we bent down to take a closer look – musk orchid (Herminium monorchis)! It had to be the smallest orchid I had ever seen, must be one of those flowers that are more common than you think because most of the time you just walk right past them without noticing.

I kept walking around the place and found lots of fly orchids and a surprising amount of marsh helleborine. Surprising, because it was bone dry, but this place apparently collects water if there’s a big downpour and then dries up again. Which you could see on the ground, it was dry mud. Just look at the background in the musk orchid picture above, that grey is natural – OOF dry mud.

Then I started having some doubts about the fragrant orchids (Gymnadenia conopsea) I was seeing everywhere. This place also hosts Gymnadenia odoratissima and I couldn’t remember how to tell them apart. So when I saw fragrant orchids that looked a bit different than what I’m used to seeing them, I just simply put my nose to use – I remembered reading that they smell different. And I thought I had found the other species, but then later on when I was reading the orchid book I found out that you can also tell them apart visually and I think I missed it this time. Maybe I came across a hybrid…

Tomorrow will be tough, especially the morning. The wind is really bad at the moment and it will keep up until tomorrow afternoon. And apparently it will also be raining. Not really made for flower photography… or landscapes either, for that matter.