Greater Butterfly Orchid

The best set of Greater Butterfly Orchid blooms I have come across to date, right near a sewage treatment works of all places. Perfect setting, short grass.

Again I have never seen such a well arranged aberration (or collective) of this species.. I always seem to find them hiding in bushes or in thick cover, ones in the open seem to be a lot smaller and shrivelled at the lower flowers, so to find this near perfect trio out in the open, in a still overcast evening was just the fantastic end to a great day.

The Greater Butterfly Orchid is to be found on neutral unimproved or semi-improved grassland, while Lesser Butterfly Orchid replaces it on upland acid grassland and moorland. They can be rather large indeed; this trio stands around 10-60cm. There are 10-40 white flowers in an open spike, each one looking more like a moth than a butterfly in my opinion (closeups to come). Like Fragrant Orchid they have a translucent spur filled with nectar. Bumble bees have too short a proboscis to reach it so the plant is often visited by larger pollinators like the Elephant Hawk Moth or Hummingbird Hawk Moth. What a wonderful picture that would make.

600mm is too much to photograph this species as the working distance is ludicrous. I used the 300mm on its own this time at a very small aperture, f3.5 (thanks to ..... for pointing out I dont always need the 2xII for super blurry backgrounds). It took about 20 minutes to tune in, get positioned, do some gardening and achieve the lowest angle I could with the satifactory blur I love so much. Just as I did the sun fell through the thick cloud that had hidden it all day and moved into lighter clouds, giving the white flowers and stems a real lift against the darker background. What a bonus.

EOS 5D, 300mm @f3.5 ISO 400 for 1/100th