‘And it must be a never-forgotten delight for anybody but the most arid of Peter Bells to come upon the Lady Orchid for the first time, its exotic spikes towering regally above the bowed, respectful bluebells in some Kentish copse.’
Jocelyn Brooke, The Wild Orchids of Britain (1950)
Kent
May 2013
Jocelyn Brooke considered British orchid enthusiasts to be few but fanatical. ‘Their hobby is a cult, a kind of freemasonry with all the jealously guarded secrets of such institutions,’ he wrote in The Wild Orchids of Britain, one of the landmark volumes on our native orchids. In it he advises that ‘if one were asked to introduce the untutored amateur to the native orchids, probably one’s wisest course would be to make for one of the less-frequented downland districts in Kent, say, or on the Hampshire and Sussex border’. It is here, he muses, on open downland or in the shade of the woods, that the orchid hunter is most likely to come across large colonies of orchids.
Kent is renowned for being the orchid capital of the UK, hosting well over half of our native species, including some that are found nowhere else in the country. Plant distributions are affected by a whole host of different factors. Is the ground wet or dry? Can it tolerate disturbance? How well does it deal with shade, grazing or the presence of other species? Orchids can be highly sensitive to light. The Bird’s-nest Orchid and Violet Helleborine grow in the darkest of woods, where the sun-loving orchids of the woodland rides are never found.
The varied geology of the British Isles and the distribution of our orchids are fundamentally linked, sometimes so closely that knowing the underlying rock type can help pin down an identification. Much of Kent is composed of alkaline soil derived from the underlying chalk. The orchids found in Kent love calcium. Contrastingly, the presence of calcium in the soil makes it difficult for other species, for example those found in the bogs and wet pastures of the north and west of the country, to take up essential nutrients. Orchids are extremely fussy; each species has its own set of specific requirements that enables it to grow and reproduce.
The calcium-loving orchids of Kent prefer old woodland or undisturbed, well-grazed downland. The county has an abundance of rare species. Even today it is not unusual to walk out onto the North Downs and come across large colonies of orchids, although how long it will remain this way is yet to be seen. In the last sixty years, grazing practices in Britain have been in decline; as a result, robust, nutrient-hogging grasses have been allowed to dominate, and are outcompeting the more delicate orchids. Because animals are no longer grazing the pastures, scrub has been allowed to grow in many places and once open downlands have become miniature forests of hawthorn and ash saplings.
The rich downland of Kent, on the other hand, which remains pocketed away in chalky valleys, provides little havens for a multitude of orchid species. It was here, on a sunny Monday afternoon in May, that I undertook the next stage of my journey. I spent the morning packing the car and fending off the hitch-hiking efforts of our cat, Tabitha, who seemed determined to come with me. Extrication from the car’s footwell or my open bag only made her more resolute. At last I was underway, heading on mercifully traffic-free roads across the south of England to the North Downs. I let the windows down and sang ‘Hooked on a Feeling’ at the top of my lungs. A Waitrose delivery lorry flashed past and I grinned smugly as I thought of my work colleagues stuck indoors stacking shelves of juice.
I pulled up outside Darland Banks, a Kent Wildlife Trust reserve tucked away between Gillingham and the M2. This was where I was hoping to find the Man Orchid, Orchis anthropophora. I’d never been able to search for this one before, as its flowering time unfortunately coincided with school exam periods.
Darland Banks is a jewel in the crown of the Kentish countryside. Out on the escarpments, fresh grass was being blown into swirls by the breeze, and the warm sun was shining down on the lemon-yellow fields of oil seed rape. Narrow chalky paths wound their way across the hillside, then disappeared enticingly into the distance.
I moseyed slowly along the bank, exchanging nods of acknowledgement with dog walkers and fellow nature enthusiasts. Some were clearly here for the butterflies, looking for skippers or the flash of a green hairstreak. Others, and it was harder to confidently pick them out, were almost certainly orchid hunting. A woman shuffled towards me, her eyes glued to the ground. At the top of the hill, a couple of old blokes wearing khaki jackets and wide-brimmed hats were scanning the grassland with methodical precision. These were the botanists, the orchidophiles, in their natural habitat. I joined in, mirroring their purposeful gait; eyes sweeping between milkworts, field madder and the golden rings of horseshoe vetch.
The Man Orchid has been given a variety of different scientific names. Linnaeus originally placed it in the insect-mimicking genus Ophrys. Here it remained until it was unceremoniously moved to Aceras and then eventually to Orchis, where it joined other similarly anthropomorphic species, whose flowers resemble little human figures. Classification can be a real head-scratcher. Over the years, it has been a source of division, pitting new-fangled molecular biology against years of taxonomic tradition.
The sun had dipped behind a small cloud, illuminating its wispy exterior and sending light cascading in all directions. With no luck on the upper slopes, I dawdled down to the bottom of the hill into an area recently cleared of scrub. Tiny hawthorns pricked through the tufts of grass. According to Summerhayes, ‘Aceras differs from many other orchids in being often found mainly or exclusively near the base of slopes, though this is not always the case’. He also notes that ‘on the whole, the Man Orchid grows best in open situations, and does not appear tolerant of much shade. Sometimes plants may be found growing in the shelter of isolated bushes or among very open scrub’. This, then, seemed like a spot they might like.
I had been walking for fifteen minutes before I came across my first Man Orchid. Even after a decade of plant hunting, the thrill of a find never wanes. And on this occasion I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly I had managed to spot this subtle, limey-yellow orchid. The slender spike was crowded with an asparagus tip of flowers, each one shaped into a remarkable little man – not unlike the figure on traffic light crossings. Green sepals and petals formed the head and the yellow lip hanging down looked just like the body. The arms and legs were a beautiful burgundy.
Each miniature figurine was different. Some were standing stock still, held to eternal attention. Others were frozen in a perpetual stride, while a disturbing number hung limply as if on the gallows. Colloquial English names for this plant are rare, but in France it is aptly, if morbidly, named L’Homme Pendu, ‘the hanged man’. In Germany it is referred to as Puppenorchis and in Italy as Ballerino. This last one I thought a bit far-fetched until I came across one spike of nine flowers, all choreographed into a mesmerising yellow ballet.
The first British record for the Man Orchid was made in the late 1600s, in a disused gravel pit in Essex by a Mr Dale. Since then it has been discovered across the south-east, with the majority of populations in Kent and Surrey. It is less frequent to the north and west. Classified as Endangered, it is a localised species and unlikely to be stumbled upon outside of nature reserves.
I moved to another part of the bank, about halfway up the hill where wild columbine rose, dogwood and the white blooms of the wayfaring-tree grew among the hedges. The plants here were more typical of those you’d find growing alongside chalk-loving orchids, with swathes of downy oatgrass, kidney vetch and yellow rattle. As far as I could tell, though, no more orchids.
Summerhayes notes that the Man Orchid is a somewhat inconspicuous species which might easily remain unnoticed in an area for a relatively long time. I decided to put this to the test, sitting myself down in the hollow of an old rabbit hole. I waited. At first, nothing happened; the palette of colours remained the same, different shades intermingling with one another as the plants shifted in the breeze. But after a few minutes, I began to notice Man Orchids; they were lurking behind vetches and buttercups, peering at me from their hiding places. Once I had trained my eye to see them, they appeared more and more frequently, and reached further and further from where I sat, like shy children coming out to inspect their parents’ dinner guests.
I had been sitting just off the path but jumped when I felt the inquisitive snuffling of a Labrador’s nose on the back of my neck. So absorbed in orchid hunting, I hadn’t heard its approach, nor its owners, who were only a few metres behind. After a short and somewhat stilted conversation, during which the Labrador attempted to sniff at my crotch, they told me that most of the Men were at the other end of the reserve. Local knowledge was exactly what I needed.
I thanked them for their time and set about gathering my things. Unfortunately, we were now headed in the same direction and so I awkwardly followed them as they made their way along the hillside, bending down to examine a plant whenever they chose to look back. We continued in this way for some time, stopping and starting along the mazy pathways. As we walked, I began seeing Man Orchids in the grass with increasing frequency. Up until then, I had seen perhaps twenty plants and assumed I was too early for so rare a flower, but I was now closing in on fifty.
Two kissing gates later and there were thousands of them carpeting the slopes. I stopped and counted thirty-three plants in less than a square metre. Every time I thought I had found the perfect plant to photograph a better one appeared over the top of my lens.
I wandered slowly and carefully through the colony, picking my way with utmost respect. Up ahead was a spike so big and pale that I initially took it to be wild mignonette, but as I drew closer its true identity became clear and my eyes widened. This Goliath of a specimen was forty centimetres tall and boasted more than fifty flowers, another fifty ready to spring from their buds at the first sign of danger. It smelled, bizarrely, of frying onions.
These orchids were paler in colour, each Man a familiar golden yellow but without the burgundy limbs of the plants I had seen earlier. I was once again hooked, finding that I had to study each and every flower: all unique, all alive. Two here were angled towards one another, caught in a never-ending conversation, and on closer inspection I noticed that some had a little protuberance between their legs: a confirmation of their manhood. J. E. Lousley, writing about the Man Orchid in Wild Flowers of Chalk & Limestone (1950), postulated that there is ‘an alternative resemblance to the human race which amuses people with imagination. The hood may be regarded as portraying the head of a dwarf with the lip for his flowing beard’. I could see what he meant, though could not rid my mind of its resemblance to a hanged man.
Hot but giddy with success, I reluctantly made my way back to the car. The melodious echo of a thrush floated down from the trees, momentarily drowning out the bland drone of the motorway in the distance. The late-afternoon sun had turned the hillside a golden green, much to the delight of the butterflies which were still bumbling from flower to flower. A breeze swept across the slope, making the ox-eye daisies bob about in mutual agreement. I wanted more than anything to spend the evening at Darland Banks and watch the sun dip below the horizon as the day came to a close, but I was being called further into Kent where, rumour had it, the Lady of the Woods was waiting.
I was still marvelling at the intricacy of the Man Orchids as I pulled off the motorway and began following the narrow lanes that wound their way through the Kentish countryside to Denge Wood. Heavy rain had been forecast for the next day and I knew that realistically this was my only chance to see Lady Orchids. Despite their names, these orchids are different species, rather than different sexes.
The Lady of the Woods, or Maid of Kent as she is locally known, was first discovered in Britain in 1666. Like so many others, she has suffered at the hands of collectors. Preyed upon for her beauty, the Lady Orchid has been forced to hide deep in the Kentish countryside, taking refuge in small copses and ancient beech woods. It’s here she remains to this day, protected by a select few dedicated guardians and attracting hundreds of admirers every year. One of her faithful guardians was Jocelyn Brooke, who described the Lady of the Woods as ‘orchid royalty’ for her rarity and beauty, placing her on a throne alongside the Military and Monkey Orchids.
Born in 1908, Brooke grew up in Kent and quickly developed precocious interests in botany and fireworks. Each week he would use his pocket money to purchase little packets of strontium nitrate, potassium chlorate from the local chemist. After fruitless days hunting for rare orchids he consoled himself by building firecrackers and rainbow rockets. In his acclaimed book The Military Orchid, he recalls how ‘my mother lived in hourly terror of my blowing myself and the entire family to smithereens. Once or twice I nearly did’.
As far as botany was concerned, what started as a well-rounded curiosity soon became a specialist interest as he zeroed in on the Orchidaceae. He was attracted by ‘those floral aristocrats, with their equivocal air of belonging partly to the vegetable [and] partly to the animal kingdom’.
By the time he was seven, he was already a keen botanist and had been ‘bitten with orchid-mania’. For his birthday he received British Orchids, How to Tell One from Another by Colonel J. S. F. Mackenzie to supplement his other wildflower guides. While admitting that the colonel’s book was not the best introduction to its subject, Brooke assures us that he was a ‘true orchidomane’ and clearly held him in high esteem.
In his writing, Brooke mentions a Mr Bundock, whose job it was to empty the composting toilet at the cottage where he and his family would spend the summer. Mr Bundock had previously provided very little interest to the young Brooke, but this all changed with a passing remark about the discovery of a local Lizard Orchid. Mr Bundock promised to bring the boy back some specimens the next evening, and Brooke waited in anticipation, only to be severely disappointed when Mr Bundock presented him with several Man Orchids, a species he had already found himself. But his disappointment, he writes, was ‘mitigated by the other orchid which Mr Bundock had brought me. This was unfamiliar: a tall, handsome spike of purple-brown and pink-spotted flowers. Obviously, I thought, it came under the desirable category of Very Rare Orchids. But which was it?’
Brooke was determined to identify Mr Bundock’s new orchid. Equipped with his new books, he set about tackling this problem, only to find that the authors contradicted one another. He desperately wanted his specimen to be a Military Orchid (‘And yet… and yet… if only it could be Orchis militaris!’), and it was identified as such by Colonel Mackenzie – but according to Edward Step, the plant was far more likely to be a Lady Orchid, colloquially known as the Great Brown-winged Orchid, which had failed to receive even a mention in the colonel’s book. Torn between the two, he wanted to believe that it was a Military, but in the end he reluctantly admitted that Mr Bundock’s orchid was the Great Brown-winged – ‘Edward Step, after all, could hardly have invented Orchis purpurea [Lady Orchid] out of sheer malice’. For now, the Military Orchid remained unfound.
Denge Wood is a large woodland complex south-west of Canterbury. Owned by the Forestry Commission and the Woodland Trust, it remains one of the best sites in Kent for Lady Orchids. But you could easily spend days walking around the wood in May and never come across this floral aristocrat, so concealed are its colonies. The ‘x’ on my map seemed to shrink into insignificance as I tramped down a dusty dirt track. Above me a dome of beech leaves dappled and sparkled. Each leaf was gently unfolding like the crinkled wings of a newly hatched dragonfly.
I was practically running by the time I arrived at the site, anxious to find the orchids before the evening light faded. In my haste, I almost missed the gate by the side of the track. Rushing through, I stumbled down a short slope and into a clearing. There, where beech and ash gave way to wayfaring-tree and stunted pines, the Lady Orchids had made their home.
Beneath a bonnet of maroon, the white lip of each flower forms a tiny figure dressed in a billowing blouse with purple tufts of miniscule hairs. Lousley describes her as having ‘an outline recalling the sketches which Victorian children used to draw of crinolined ladies, and the deep brown hood may be likened to their bonnets’. I personally think the adjective ‘brown’ is used far too often for a colour that I would liken to claret or, as the Latin epithet purpurea suggests, a rich reddish purple. She does have a claim to royalty after all.
Kent is the rightful home of Britain’s Lady Orchids – as Lousley puts it, the Lady is ‘a specially Kentish plant’ – and although rare, where found they often occur in large numbers. Here in Denge Wood I had several hundred plants all to myself, a pantheon of purple and white. But in recent years, this orchid has plucked up the courage to begin exploring westward. She has been spotted in the woods on Salisbury Plain and admiring the view over the Thames in Oxfordshire. According to early records, the Lady may not have been so rare outside Kent. Anne Pratt, an immensely energetic nineteenth century botanist, observes that the orchid was ‘often carried into the towns in baskets for sale, mingling among green Tway-blades, and dim brown Bird’s-nests, and overhung by graceful ferns’. Nearly one hundred years later, Jocelyn Brooke brands this ‘a regrettable practice which still, unfortunately, survives among the local hawkers, who sell this beautiful orchid at the street corners (at sixpence a bunch)’.
Anne Pratt (1806–1893) was not just a fantastic botanist, but also one of the best English botanical illustrators of the Victorian era. She is variously described as being sensible and humorous, displaying a complete lack of fear for gamekeepers, barbed-wire fences and the weather.
It must have been a lot of fun plant hunting with Miss Pratt. Jocelyn Brooke writes about her tireless botanising in The Military Orchid: ‘One imagines her setting forth on some summer’s afternoon in the 1850s, perhaps escorted by some frock-coated clergyman… sensibly clad, minutely observant, humorously deprecating the vestiges of superstition among the villagers, and always ready, by an appropriate word here or there, to assist in spreading the Light of Revelation. Toiling over the Dover Cliffs for Silene nutans [Nottingham catchfly], wading through the marshes about Sandwich for the greater spearwort, or searching “in the woodlands or on the bushy hill” for Orchis purpurea [Lady Orchid] – one sees her, indomitable but incurably lady-like, pursuing her purposeful way through the Kentish countryside, her tweeded figure bathed in the warm, golden light of a Victorian Sunday afternoon in summer’.
I drifted through the clearing, from one council of lofty ladies to another. It’s one of the largest orchids to grow in Britain. I then began to notice the subtle differences between each plant. Some had pale bubblegum pinks and rose-tinted veils, while others were completely white and freckle-less, hooded by pastel-green sepals. A significant proportion of the colony towered elegantly above the surrounding herbs, their flowers showy and flamboyant, but a few had stunted, underdeveloped stems.
I couldn’t help but compare their florets to the Man Orchids I had seen earlier in the afternoon, and found myself equally enthralled by these tiny white figurines. They were less active than the Men, preferring to stand tall and be admired by their onlookers than dance around like the Ballerinos.
Lady Orchids aren’t always as dignified as they may seem though. At the turn of the millenium a Lady Orchid was discovered at Hartslock Nature Reserve in Oxfordshire, growing among a small population of her close relative the Monkey Orchid. It turns out they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Each spring, on the small hillside overlooking the Thames, the Lady and the Monkey undergo a coupling every bit as incestuous as that practised by the royal families of ancient Egypt. Lady Orchids hybridise at any opportunity, running riot across western Europe with Military, Monkey and Man Orchids, forming extensive broods of illegitimate offspring.
Denge Wood was slowly succumbing to the shadows. I was still taking photos, although it was becoming increasingly difficult in the low light. Making my way past one last congregation of Ladies, I spotted the dull green of two Common Twayblades, my tenth orchid of the year, nestled among the dog’s-mercury. Their slender spikes bear many inconspicuous green flowers, giving them the remarkable ability to disappear into the background while in plain sight.
The Twayblade has been known to grow in Britain for centuries, the earliest record being published in 1548 in Turner’s Names of Herbes. He calls it the ‘Martagon’, says it is found ‘in many places of Englande in watery middowes and in woddes’. It is second only to the Common Spotted as Britain’s most abundant orchid, although I suspect its extremely camouflaged flowers are considerably under-recorded, particularly given its affection for hiding in ‘woddes’.
Few local names for this species are recorded, but in Wiltshire it is colloquially known as Adder’s Tongue – the lip is forked and not unlike a reptilian tongue – while in Somerset the name Sweethearts is often used, because of its pair of distinctive egg-shaped leaves. Gerard describes each flower as ‘resembling a gnat, or a little gosling newly hatched’, but no matter what angle I looked at it, I couldn’t understand where he was coming from.
Once again, Brooke has plenty to say about this species: ‘If the orchids represent the “Royal Family” of flowering plants, what are we to say of the undistinguished and far-from-regal Twayblade? Its royalty seems nominal and arbitrary – a commoner ennobled, so to speak… scarcely, indeed, ennobled at all… Yet the humble, plebeian Twayblade is a true orchid, and, though outwardly unimpressive, has more than its fair share of the structural oddity of the family. Darwin, in fact, declared it to be “one of the most remarkable of the whole order”. It almost seems as though this outward unattractiveness were compensated by the ingenuity of the plant’s sexual mechanisms.’
Pollination is indeed remarkable in the Twayblade, illustrating how beautifully balanced the relationship between plants and insects can be. The lip, hanging down below the other sepals and petals, has a narrow nectar-producing groove, which the insect follows until it comes into contact with a tongue-like structure called the rostellum. Contact with the rostellum triggers the release of a drop of sticky liquid which glues the pollinia onto the insect’s head in seconds. The insect is startled by the sudden movement and flies away, often to another plant, where it once again begins feeding on nectar, simultaneously bringing the pollinia into contact with the sticky stigma. Never underestimate a Twayblade.
By now the sun had disappeared completely, leaving behind a pink blur above the trees. The stately Ladies of Denge Wood stood tall all around me, watched over by attentive Twayblades and serenaded by the harmonious song of the blackbird and the song thrush. Jocelyn Brooke was no stranger to the serenity of Kentish woodland and no doubt he spent countless hours searching for precious spikes of purpurea and militaris. A year or two later, still searching for the elusive Military orchid, he was once again presented with a fresh specimen. With more detailed information about the whereabouts of this flower, he eventually managed to find it himself and confirms, having long ago abandoned the idea that militaris walks in the woods, that it was the Great Brown-winged. He goes on to provide a wonderful description of it as ‘the most regal of British orchids, and perhaps the loveliest of English wildflowers: its tall pagodas of brown-hooded, white-lipped blossoms towering grandly, like some alien visitor, exotic as Miss Trumpett [a sophisticated local lady] at a village tea party, above the fading bluebells and the drab thickets of dog’s mercury, in a wood which I had known all my childhood, but whose distinguished inhabitant I had never before discovered’.