Having a dog means that I am up bright and early every morning to walk her. We are very lucky to have many lovely walks around where we live, we usually walk down to the village and then along the beach .. and then back along a little ‘meadow’ of waste land that has never been built upon.

It’s on these walks that I have started to notice just how many wild flowers are growing amongst the grass and rubble – and started to take my little compact camera with me on the walks (Dave’s not the only one with a camera here!!)

I’m always interested in macro photography of a single flower – as I am fascinated with the intricate centres and patterns that each flower has – but even I have been amazed and astonished at the sheer number and variety of different flowers that I have captured – all within a very small area of grassland and abandoned waste land.

I will try to put some names to these – but I warn you – I’ve never seen most of these amazing flowers before – and so many of them look so different close-up too!
This one is rather special – it’s called the Orchis Italica – or ‘the Hanging Naked Man Orchid’ .. take a closer look – can you see them?! .. how amazing is that?!

I’ve been crawling around to get many of these shots – much to the amusement of our little dog who comes over and starts snuffling around wondering what I am up to! This one is familiar to South African friends as a Carpobrotus edulis or a Hottentot fig or sour fig and apparently the fruit are edible!

Poppies are always my favourites – they grow beautifully wild and unfettered here – such delicate petals that are lost at the first sign of a heavy rain

This little fella made me chuckle – it looks like a little contented fat man chortling! (well I do have an active imagination!!) Apparently it’s an Ophrys speculum – or mirror orchid

I absolutely love this shot

and even more so – the same flower with a light dusting of frost:

It’s amazing what you can capture if you get up close and personal! I think I’ll leave these to to get on with what comes naturally!

I love the simplicity of this tiny little flower which required quite a zoom lens to capture it. It’s a Lathyrus cicera and is a species of wild pea known by the common names of red pea or flatpod peavine:

And I think this one below is related to the chortling man above .. another tiny little flower hidden in the long grass belonging to the orchid family – this one is a Yellow Bee Orchid:

The tiniest of flowers can have the prettiest markings:

and the most delicate and intricate little spikes:

I went out specially to capture this little wild iris growing up into the morning sunshine complete with droplets of dew – such a beautiful pink colour:

And was lucky enough to also capture this little beauty with the same dew still lightly frosting the back of the stems:

It would be impossible to describe just how beautiful the meadow is in the morning sunshine, I’ve been trying for weeks to capture one of the many pretty butterflies that skip around us, fluttering and teasing in the breeze. Finally this one alighted just long enough for me to catch it for a second with the camera:

It’s not all flowers though, here’s the local neighbourhood resident saying hello to us:

I had no idea that daisies close up in this way at night, with their petals folded back like this – it almost seems to have been caught up in a wind tunnel:

A few minutes of warm sunshine and they soon start to unfurl and look more natural:

The colours of this one are just amazing and is definitely one of my favourite flowers:

There were so many flowers that I have captured that it would be impossible to do anything more than put the remainder in a gallery for you to enjoy .. just click any image to start the slideshow – and if you know any of the names of them .. please do let us know!

And thank you to the members of the fabulous Gardening in the Algarve Facebook group – a very kind member sent me over to this Algarve Wildlife page which has enabled me to identify a few of the flowers!