Burnt Orchid (Neotinea ustulata)
Key Details
| Taxonomic Groups: | Vascular plant > flowering plant > Herbaceous plant |
| Red List Status: | Endangered (Not Relevant) [EN(nr)] |
| D5 Status: | Included in the baseline Red List Index for England (Wilkins, Wilson & Brown, 2022) |
| Section 41 Status: | (not listed) |
| Taxa Included Synonym: | Orchis ustulata |
| UKSI Recommended Name: | Neotinea ustulata |
| UKSI Recommended Authority: | (L.) R.M.Bateman, Pridgeon & M.W.Chase |
| UKSI Recommended Qualifier: | (none specified) |
| Red List Citation: | in Stroh et al., 2014 |
| Notes on taxonomy/listing: | (none) |
Criteria
| Question 1: | Does species need conservation or recovery in England? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | EN in GB & England. This species continues to decline dramatically in Britain: the new Plant Atlas records a strong decline of 97% post-1987. |
| Question 2: | Does recovery/ conservation depend on species-specific actions? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | Targeted management needed to ensure all populations survive & flourish: management likely to include heavy late summer / autumn grazing of sites by sheep |
| Question 3: | At a landscape scale, would the species benefit from untargeted habitat management to increase habitat mosaics, structural diversity, or particular successional stages? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | Maintenance or reinstatement of traditional management (through a long continuity of heavy grazing). |
Species Assessment
| Current step on the Species Recovery Curve (SRC): | 5. Remedial action identified |
| Recovery potential/expectation: | Low - Combination or other (detail in comments) |
| National Monitoring Resource: | Opportunistic - insufficient |
| Species Comments: | Neotinea ustulata requires very short grassland & is probably highly intolerant of even competition from moderately tall grassland forbs, probably disappearing rapidly at undergrazed sites. It probably survived best as metapopulations at the landscape scale (e.g. sheep walks etc), but now additionally suffers from habitat degradation & fragmentation. |
Key Actions
Key Action 1
Proposed Action: Monitor all populations on a 1-3 year basis, recording numbers of plants & assessing condition of sites /suitability for N. ustulata (including grazing regimes, vegetation structure, vegetation cover incl. cover of pleurocarpous mosses)
Action targets: 5. Remedial action identified
Action type: Targeted monitoring
Duration: >10 years
Scale of Implementation: National
High priority sites: All populations
Comments: Neotinea ustulata is likely to disappear rapidly in surviving sites through undergrazing even for a few years (& indeed overgrazing probably rarely presents a threat). Any monitoring of sites should record the state of vegetation, including height, presence of mineral soil microsites for seedling establishment, & presence/abundance of pleurocarpous mosses.
Key Action 2
Proposed Action: Maintain or restore heavy levels of late summer / winter grazing (probably ideally with sheep), across all sites where species occurs, aiming to expand & link colonies through reversion of agricultural land to short, species-rich grassland
Action targets: 5. Remedial action identified
Action type: Habitat management
Duration: >10 years
Scale of Implementation: ≤ 50 sites
High priority sites: All.
Comments: Neotinea ustulata declines dramatically with under sites with reduced grazing levels. Conversely the species is known to colonise reversions from arable to conservation grassland.
Key Action 3
Proposed Action: Implement the correct grazing of calcareous grasslands in suitable locations to promote recovery for this species
Action targets: 4. Autecology and pressures understood
Action type: Advice & support
Duration: 3-5 years
Scale of Implementation: National
High priority sites: All
Comments: Many rarer chalk & limestone grassland species require heavy levels of traditional grazing (e.g. Herminium monorchis, Neotinea ustulata, Pulsatilla vulgaris, Tephroseris integrifolia).
Acknowledgment:
Data used on this website are adapted from Threatened species recovery actions 2025 baseline (JP065): Technical report and spreadsheet user guide (Natural England, 2025). Available here.