This orchid is usually greenish in colour and so is often quite hard to see even when you are close to it. It can have reddish hues as well so of the two growing quite close to each other, it was the dark red one which attracted our attention first. It is distributed widely throughout the British Isles and if anything is found more often in the north than the south. It is plentiful in Ireland.

It is also about to change its name.

Genetic work by Bateman (1997) has shown that this orchid belongs to the Dactylorhiza genus and so should be named Dactylorhiza viridis. However until BSBI change their master lists I'm not changing mine either.