FRILLS AND FLOUNCES

Orchids are our most flamboyant flora – Sarah Raven has compared this lovely species to “a blackcurrant ripple ice cream doing a can-can”. It’s one of several pink, purple and white orchids in bloom from May to July, and resembles the common spotted orchid but is often smaller, with rounder leaf spots and no long central lobe in its frilly ‘skirts’. It grows on damp moors and heaths, mainly in uplands of the north and west.

FIND OUT MORE Learn more about British wildflowers at www.plantlife.org.uk