Orchidaceae - Orchids

All images on this website have been taken in Leicestershire and Rutland by NatureSpot members. We welcome new contributions - just register and use the Submit Records form to post your photos. Click on any image below to visit the species page. The RED / AMBER / GREEN dots indicate how easy it is to identify the species - see our Identification Difficulty page for more information. A coloured rating followed by an exclamation mark denotes that different ID difficulties apply to either males and females or to the larvae - see the species page for more detail.

Wildflowers

'Wildflowers' is a popular name used by many field-guides to encompass flowering herbaceous species.

'Trees, Shrubs & Climbers', 'Grasses, Sedges & Rushes', 'Ferns & Horsetails', 'Mosses' and 'Liverworts' can be found in separate species Galleries.

See our Recording Trees, Wildflowers & Grasses page for useful guidance on what to record.

More on recording in Leicestershire and Rutland and contacts for our County Recorders are on the webpage of our local VC55 branch of the BSBI.

Clive Stace’s ‘New Flora of the British Isles' - 4th edition (C&M Floristics, 2019) is the standard reference book that NatureSpot uses for verifying records.

Click on the headings below to expand/contract the text.

Leicestershire and Rutland resources

VC55 Rare Plant Register (Hall, Woodward) - see this link for details.

More on recording in Leicestershire and Rutland is on the webpage of our local VC55 branch of the BSBI, here.

Useful websites and publications

Facebook Group: Wildflowers of Britain & Ireland

British Wild Flowers - an enthusiast's photo site. Comprehensive photo library but only one species at a time.

BSBI Plant Identification - lots of resources for helping you to identify that plant!

We recommend that you look at the 'Get Started' advice on the BSBI's website, which includes Andrew Branson's useful reviews of some popular field guides.

The botanist’s bible is Clive Stace’s ‘New Flora of the British Isles' - 4th edition (C&M Floristics, 2019). Not for the faint-hearted, but it does include keys for the identification of all native, naturalised and crop plants in the British Isles, and is the standard reference book that NatureSpot uses for verifying records.

To help identify plants that are not in flower, many botanists use John Poland and Eric Clement's 'The Vegetative Key to the British Flora' - 2nd edition (BSBI, 2020).

The BSBI also publish a set of Handbooks on difficult plant groups, with detailed keys, descriptions and line drawings (for example, sedges, umbellifers, willows and poplars, grasses, pondweeds). These are excellent publications. There is also their Plant Crib guidance, with many useful tips for more difficult species.

Specific ID resources may be found under each section, family or species in the galleries.

If you know of other websites or books that you would recommend, do let us know: info@naturespot.co.uk