In habitat site...Dactylorhiza Incarnata

[daveyp1970]

A few pics of the straight Dactlorhiza Incarnata(which is a very rare plant in these parts) and the others are of a dark purple form and of hybrids.

[Panu]

Nice, but which ssp. ? The racemes seems dense and the leaves are broad and uniformly green, not like the ssp. incarnata or ssp. cruenta here.

[daveyp1970]

Panu i will take more pics so you can have a look,i am no expert just love to see them.If you could i.d the ssp i would be very gratefull,i think the problem is there is fuschii and Dactylorhiza purpurella flowering making an id hard.

[SteveC2]

Identifying these from photos is a nightmare but it's not that much easier in the field given the number of hybirds about.  For instance I found five of these yesterday, surrounded by southerns, hybrids and enough fuchsii to sink a battleship.  A man whose opinion I respect says ssp coccinea.  A man whose opinion I also respect says not.  Frankly I don't know what to think.

[daveyp1970]

Steve that looks like ssp coccinea but i am just a novice,Dactylorhiza's are a nightmare,me and FredG have scratched our heads loads of times looking at them in the field.I think the problem were i live, is that a lot of the nature reserves are ex colliery sites so the imported top soil comes from everywhere and anywhere so all of a sudden more than one sp pops up ,then hybridisation follows and head scratching begins.I hope this makes sense and might be wrong but its how i see it.

[fredg]

Nice site Dave.
I look forward to that trip next year.

I'm beginning to like the two terms Dactylorhiza sp. and Dactylorhiza hybrid.
They do save a lot of head scratching