Orchid Secrets

On June 5th I blipped a bright pink dactylorhiza flowering in the garden here. Tonight I dug it up!

Why? Well my good friend Ian Young in Aberdeen reckons that this is the time to divide them. If you lift them in the green, while the leaves are still growing, you can twist off the new tuber seen here and if you replant the old one, growing here in the background, it will produce another new tuber. Two for one increase!

Dactylorhiza - from the Greek, dactylos (finger) and rhiza (root) - from the two to five fingered tubers.

See some of Ians' dactylorhizas here.