Some wild orchids and other flowers

[camille1585]

Yesterday I went to a small 'natural' garden, tucked away behind some building on the univeristy campus in my town. It's a sort of long running ecological experiment, where they removed the poor acidic topsoil and replaced it with chalky marl from South Limburg 20 years ago and scientists been documenting the fauna and flora in garden and pond located in its center. The small park has become home to 7 different species of orchids and countless other native plants.

Yesterday I spotted 2 of them. The first is the Southern Marsh Orchid - Dactylorhiza praetermissa - which grows in abundance. Only one was blooming, the others were spiking.



The second is Orchis militaris, which appeared in the garden for the first time in 2019. From what I read about it, it's extremely rare in the Netherlands and usually found in the region of South Limburg. I'm embarrassed to say that I took no less than 95 photos of it with 3 different lenses...








I then spent another hour wandering around, taking photos of flowers and insects.











I plan to go back to the garden in 1-2 weeks to see any more orchids are out. Unfortunately with the years of drought the populations have really suffered. I'm afraid that the Early Marsh Orchid may be completely gone, and it was the dominant species 6-8 years ago.

[Roberta]

Oh, WOW! Your photos are superb! Both of the orchids and the "wildlife".

[DeaC]

Lovely blooms but I'm esp. happy to see the bees. TY

[My Green Pets]

Beautitful, do you have an Instagram?

[Mr.Fakename]

Originally Posted by camille1585

It's a sort of long running ecological experiment, where they removed the poor acidic topsoil and replaced it with chalky marl from South Limburg 20 years ago
...
From what I read about it, it's extremely rare in the Netherlands and usually found in the region of South Limburg.

So what I assume from this, is that some seeds were in the excavated marl, and stayed dormant for more than a decade.
Pretty cool to see how resilient orchids can be!

Maybe all hope isn't lost for Early Marsh Orchids.

[camille1585]

Originally Posted by My Green Pets

Beautitful, do you have an Instagram?

Sorry, I don't. I barely go on Facebook anymore, so it also seems a bit pointless to start up new accounts elsewhere. My photos go on my photo website, but I don't actively share that either.

Originally Posted by Mr.Fakename

So what I assume from this, is that some seeds were in the excavated marl, and stayed dormant for more than a decade.
Pretty cool to see how resilient orchids can be!

Maybe all hope isn't lost for Early Marsh Orchids.

I did some reading about the garden, and the main hypothesis seems to be that the seed(s) came in on the wind, which is a common method of dispersal. Second and less likely hypothesis is that seeing as the creators of the garden did scatter orchid seeds when starting the garden, a couple may have finally germinated.