Orchid milestone

Today I found my hundredth 2016 orchid here at The Beeches. Ninety nine of them are Common Spotted Orchids and one is a Broad-leaved Helleborine. A great result for wildlife management as is shown by the graph above. Starting in 2011 with 14 orchids and only 11 in 2012 we have therefore achieved a nine-fold increase in six years. The managemnt in fact consists only of two things - cutting for hay after the orchids have flowered and protecting the orcids from predation by rabbits. Now that we have reached 100 I think I may not bother any more with the rabbit protection.