Tuesday 5th April 2022

God decided to create a family of flowers with only three petals and three sepals, and told Mother Nature to see what she could come up with.

What she came up with was orchids.

There is an apparetnly endless variation in shape, form, colour and size in orchids, so we, man, can never get bored. But as we like to label things, we do struggle with families like Ophrys, mostly Ophrys, in telling them apart.

The orchids, however, don't seem to mind.

And our guides want fr us to see as many species as possible, which is why in these remaining days, as the number of soecies seen racks up, we have to go further and higher to see the next one.

During the night, wind strengthened, waking most of us up, as the wind whistled around the hotel in its hilltop location. And when we got up, it was cool too, cool enough to put my old fleece on.

The main site was to be a hillside, but it was clear that could not happen, so a change of plan meant after breakfast we would be heading to the coast south of Lindos, an hour's drive away.

The drive took us over a mountain pass, and down the otherside, a succession of hairpins and switchbacks, made all the more hairy by flocks of ferral goats wandering across the road.

The coast is Rhodes most visitors know, all hotels, restaurants, bars and condos, and not pretty at all. We drove through identikit towns, one after the other until we turned off the main road and headed down a dust track to one of dozens of identical olive groves, but this one had orchids.

As we walked into the grove, on the right a single spike of Orchis italica, or the Naked Man Orchid, was seen. This is a close relative of our Monkey Orchid, but if anything, Italica is crazier. Also on the site is Ophrys Mammosa, or the Breasted Orchid, so a site for the Benny Hill fan or Finbarr Saunders.

Fnar fnar.

After an hour, we drove further along the track to the beach, where the botany-crazed explored the flora, while I joined Dave in some twitching. We saw a Pallid Harrier and a Marsh Harrier, as well as good views of a Woodchat Shrike pair.

We drove on.

Next site was half an hour away, again down a dusty track. I have been wanting to see a Hoopoe since we arrived, and to my joy, as the trundled along the track, a single bird was flushed from the field margin.

HOOPOE!

Once at the site, we had lunch, and were then frustrated by seeing a swallowtail butterfly on the other side of a fence so unable to get shots of the basking giant beauty.

We hunted for a new Ophrys, which we found, and white variants of a Tongue Orchid, which we did not. Orchids were growing in undergrowth, making photography tricky.

And on the way back to the buses, we came across two spikes of an old friend, Man Orchid, the same species as we get back home in Kent.

A short drive further on, and in another olive grove, we went hunting for two new species, and during the hunt I managed to walk into a branch and cut my head open. Maybe I underplayed this at the time, It really did hurt at the time, and a fair amount of blood came out, but it dried in the sun, and with help from Jon the bleeding stopped, so I could go back to orchiding.

Further along the track was yet another grove, and here among the trees was a further Ophrys, as well as a carpet of violet Broomrapes An amazing sight and site. We scattered, and each time we found something that looked new, we called for the guides to come over.

Final stop was on a lead from fellow orchidists. Down in the depth of a valley so dry it seemed like the surface of the moon, reached by a steeply twisting track, we stopped, and walked through a grove again, then up the sunny hillside behind, where a dozen tiny spikes of Ophrys persephonae were found.

And snapped.

We were done for the day. It was nearly five, and a half hour drive back to the hotel, the bus was quiet for once, even Dave was quiet. All shagged and orchided out.

Back in my room, I had a shower, cleaned the wound on my head, had a shower. Felt much better.

Dinner was grilled fish, but stuffed with herbs, and was nice enough, even for soeone like me who's not a fishy fan.