Broad Leaved Helliborines - More Variants photos

Well at long last managed to get up on Hutton Roof to take a few more photos of some of the fantastic variants.  The first two I checked out was Purpurea No. 1 and Purpurea No.2 which are about two metres apart.  No.1, the darker specimen is well within the shade  by being about 12ft back into Hazel coppiced canopy, whereby No.2 is more to the edge of the woodland and obviously taking in more light, but even so No 2 is again a very fine specimen.

The above photo is of Purpurea Specimen 1 which is far darker than its nearby neighbour Specimen 2 (shown below)
(Please click over the photo to enlarge)  You can clearly see the epichile on the top two flowers. 

Both of the above photos relate to Purpurea Specimen No.2
(Please click over the photos to enlarge).

I later went over to see if I could get a photo of the pure viridiflora specimen, but sadly this had been damaged by deer since my last visit and was no longer available to photograph however near by was three very light specimens which are near to the variant, but just showing some slight traces of purple.  This colonization situation is quite common within variants whereby you can sometimes get several in close vicinity to one another.

The above two are very light helliborine variants.  Although they are in very close vicinity
to a pure "Viridiflora", these plants can't been considered for the title yet, because you can
see light traces of purple within the petals and sepals

SWIFTS UPDATE........(4th August 2014)

Most of our village (Burton In Kendal, Cumbria) Swifts left us on or around Tuesday July 29th 2014.  The last high count had been 41 birds seen flying overhead (locally) on the previous Friday July 25th 2014.  On Friday last (August 1st 2014), we still had 11 birds flying overhead with two birds seen to enter their nest site on the cottages adjoining the Post Office.

It has been a national trend this year that most of the Swifts throughout the country are departing back to Africa at least one week to ten days earlier than they normally would.

The Burton Swifts Study Group are trying to monitor the situation this week to see if we can manage to record the latest departure date.