Finally, an overcast day with little wind! I had a list of eight flowers I should theoretically be able to shoot today, and when I finished my shooting, I had nine. Only four of them from my list, though! Amazing things happen… I wanted to shoot early marsh orchids and was happy to find them growing plentiful after last year, which seemed to have been an off-year for them. But I discovered something new – my #3 new orchid this year is a twayblade (Listera ovata)! I’m so proud I found it all by myself, after the two first ones which were shown to me.

Then I headed to the lesser butterfly orchid location to get some pictures in a more decent light than what I had on Friday. To get there, I have to walk a stretch through trail-less forest and I seem to be taking a different route every time because this time I came across something new. I had round-leaved wintergreens on my list, I didn’t shoot any such but now I got a green-flowered wintergreen instead! They were not in full bloom yet so I’ll be going back in a few days.

Having done the butterfly orchids, I dragged my gear up to the mine. There’s a patch of heath spotted orchids behind the main building and although it’s just about the most common orchid here, I don’t have any good pictures of it and this seemed like a perfect opportunity to get some. When I got there, I saw something bright orange at the edge of the forest – orange lilies growing here?! Well who am I to argue, of course I photographed them. And afterwards, find a co-operating heath spotted orchid to finish off my busy day. Except, I ended up with a common spotted orchid (Dactylorhiza maculata ssp. fuchsii) instead! This has always been something a grey area for me, I haven’t been 100% sure if I really had a common spotted orchid in my collection or not. But now, equipped with my new id skills, I am sure that I do.

Days just don’t get any better than this!