‘It was seldom, in the social milieu frequented by my family, that I encountered anything so exotic and orchidaceous as Miss Trumpett.’
Jocelyn Brooke, The Military Orchid (1948)
Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire
June 2013
Miss Trumpett, in the words of Jocelyn Brooke, was ‘full-lipped, with powdered cheeks of a peculiarly thick, granular texture, and raven-black frizzy hair’. She would regularly spark gossip among the village curtain twitchers, appearing on summer afternoons dressed in resplendent gowns ‘worthy of Ascot’, complete with extravagant, colourful hats. Brooke was utterly infatuated with her, fascinated by her clothes, her rich, resonant voice and her Latin American roots; it does not seem unreasonable to imagine that he spent many a botanical expedition daydreaming about her. But after a single romantic liaison and the accompanying disapproval of his nurse, Brooke eventually decides that perhaps they are too different, her world too alien, for the romance to ever fully flourish.
The modern-day association between orchids and the exotic is epitomised by Brooke’s depiction of Miss Trumpett as orchidaceous. The two words have become so closely linked that I am often met with amazement when I say that there are more than fifty different orchid species growing wild here in temperate old Britain; people assume that orchids can only be found growing in the decadent depths of the Amazonian rainforest – or in the local garden centre. But while our islands may not host anything on the same scale as the Cattleyas orchid and Phalaenopsis orchid that abound in our supermarkets, a quick flick through the centre pages of this book will hopefully convince you that the variety of forms our native species take are anything but bland. They can be just as alluring to collectors as the showiest of Paphiopedilums.
During the nineteenth century, when Orchidelirium was sweeping across the country, many who could not afford the steep prices for extravagant bouquets of Amazonian orchids simply went local; they took to the woods and downs, plundering populations of Ladies, Bees and Bird’s-nests and returning home with baskets laden with specimens. Some would be sold by the bunch at local markets, while others would end up in the vast hervaria, consisting of a multitude of species and varieties, assembled by naturalists. The legacy of this Victorian obsession with plant collecting is still evident today, when we consider the plight of so many of our native species.
One plant that suffered particularly from the depredation by nineteenth-century collectors was the Monkey Orchid. In his book Wild Orchids of Britain, V. S. Summerhayes writes that ‘being one of our rarest orchids, and [with] the remarkable resemblance of each flower to a small monkey, this species has always had a special fascination for orchid lovers’. He goes on to note that ‘the species was until about 1835 still widely distributed and locally plentiful on both sides of the Thames’ but ‘within a comparatively short period of time it had become rare’. He suspects that ‘rapacious collecting at one period probably contributed to its disappearance’.
The Monkey Orchid was first recorded in Britain in 1666 by Christopher Merrett, who found it alongside the Military Orchid ‘on several Chalkey hills neer the highway from Wallingford to Redding on Barkshire side of the river’. While old records for this species can be dubious, given the tendency people had to confuse the Monkey with Military and Lady Orchids, it is clear that it was once quite frequent in the Chilterns. The species then went into rapid decline, partly due to voracious collectors but also as a result of the ploughing of downland and the increase in the local rabbit population. Within ninety years, the number of significant Chiltern populations had dwindled to a single site near Goring-on-Thames called Hartslock.
During the 1920s, the population at Hartslock remained stable, with over a hundred flowering plants, and continued to increase through subsequent years. Unfortunately, the site took a hit in the late 1940s, when the lower meadows were ploughed up. After the Second World War, the Americans had sold off their surplus tracked machinery to local farmers who, now equipped with new firepower, proceeded to churn up the local downland in order to combat the national food shortage. Fortunately, the steepest part of the slope remained untouched and a few plants were able to survive here; they still grow there today. After a painful few years, during which the number of flowering plants remained in single figures, Hartslock was bought by the Berks, Bucks & Oxon Wildlife Trust (BBOWT) in 1975. Despite introducing new management strategies, it took a while for the orchids to get going again but the number of plants has steadily increased and since the turn of the century the site has supported 300 plants, of which at least one-third flower each year.
And Hartslock is no longer Britain’s only site for the Monkey Orchid. The Harraps tell the following story of its discovery in west Kent in 1952: ‘a single Monkey Orchid appeared on the rough grass of a disused tennis court at a vicarage at Otford. Every year, until 1955, the vicar took the seed capsules and scattered seed onto nearby downland. In 1956 there was a single robust spike and a further six non-flowering plants at the vicarage. However, on the retirement of the botanically minded vicar the new incumbent would not guarantee to safeguard the colony. All the orchids were moved to nearby private land, where the largest flowered once only, in 1957, and then the Monkeys vanished.’
The Monkey Orchid had in fact been recorded near Faversham in Kent in 1777. A few plants in the area over the next two centuries, and in 1955, the first of a string of new plants appeared near the town, where they continue to grow to this day. Between 1958 and 1985, the plants were hand pollinated to ensure seed was produced and numbers gradually increased, with more than 200 flowering spikes in 1965. Today the site remains private but still supports similar numbers. In the same year that hand pollination was instigated at Faversham, seed was taken and scattered at other sites in Kent in the hope that further populations would establish themselves. Most failed, but by a stroke of luck, the Monkey Orchid took a liking to Park Gate Down, where the population has since stabilised at about a hundred plants and continues to increase. This is the third and final known site for Monkey Orchids in Britain.
Interestingly, the Kentish Monkeys differ noticeably from the Chiltern plants. They are on average taller and more robust, with bigger leaves and larger purple spots on the lip, and are much more richly coloured than their Oxfordshire relatives. At the same time, there is a lot of overlap between the populations and it is thought that any variation is well within the normal range for this species. Morphometric work by Bateman and Farrington showed that morphological differences between the two are negligible. Considering the two as separate varieties would be like taking two daisies from your front lawn, one with pinkish petals and the other pure white, and assigning them and their progeny different names, despite the fact that they both fit within the average range of colour variation within the large population on the lawn. While there is very little variation within populations, particularly in Oxfordshire, this is thought to be a reflection of a highly depleted gene pool as a result of passing through a genetic bottleneck.1 Given that the colonies are so isolated, genetic deterioration is a real threat.
A few days after my visit to the Hampshire hangers I drove up to Oxfordshire to visit the Chiltern Monkey Orchid population at Hartslock. Red kites circled above the A34 as I headed north, clearly enjoying the rising thermals and increasing in frequency the further I went. It is easy to judge how near you are to the Chilterns by counting the number of red kites in the sky; five or six a minute and you are nearly there. I had been to Hartslock once before, eagerly dragging my parents out one Sunday afternoon in 2009, three weeks earlier in the year. My notes from that day are barely legible, a reflection of my excitement, the occasional awestruck sentence scribbled down in between photographing Monkey Orchids.
I got to Goring late morning and parked in a small layby at the bottom of the narrow winding lane. The sun was already high in the sky, turning the road surface ahead of me into a nebulous haze: it was going to be a scorcher. The reserve is named after a lock on the river owned by the Hart family in the early 1500s. The lock was demolished in 1910, but the family name lives on up on the hill.
I left the road and began climbing up through the woods, woodruff and sanicle succeeding rough chervil and common vetch as I went. The trees held the fresh green of spring, and sunshine streamed in through the leaves dappling the woodland floor. A cluster of ghost-pale White Helleborines grew at the top of the hill under a row of large beech trees, providing a surprise seventeenth species before I had even reached the main slopes.
While similar to the Sword-leaved Helleborines I had seen in Hampshire, Cephalanthera damasonium is far less extravagant, its flowers being more dumpy and off-white – earning it the name Egg Orchid in parts of the country – not quite attaining the purity of its rarer cousin. Not only this, but they don’t open nearly as widely. In fact, the flowers of the White Helleborine barely open at all, often leading unknowing admirers to believe they are still in bud. Inside the flower, at the base of the lip, are three golden-yellow ridges much as in longifolia, which supposedly guide insects such as bees into the mouth of the flower, where they come into contact with the mass of yellow vanilla-tasting pseudopollen. Edward Step, writing about June in the woods in his book Wild Flowers in their Natural Haunts, recalls finding a White Helleborine in the shadow of a beech, with which it is associated.
‘The White Helleborine is a wasp-flower: therefore it has no hollow spur for the secretion of honey, for the wasp has no long tongue like the butterflies and some of the bees… One is reminded, by this difference in the structure of different Orchids to suit the mouths of special insects, of the fable, attributed to Aesop, of the scurvy tricks played by Fox and Stork upon each other. The Fox invited the Stork to a feast, but the wines were served in shallow dishes from which the Fox could lap them but the Stork could not. Then the Stork, in returning the compliment, had her dainties served up in long-necked vessels in which she could insert her long beak, whilst the Fox had to be content with licking off the outside what little chanced to overflow. The Orchids, apparently, are not actuated by mischievous motives of that sort, but provide suitable accommodation for the guests they desire.’
The White Helleborine is a somewhat introverted orchid. Sarah Raven describes it as a ‘straight-laced librarian’ of a flower, a ‘spinster who turns herself out neatly in public’, sentiments echoed by Jocelyn Brooke, who writes that ‘owing to the unwillingness of its flowers to open, the White Helleborine has an oddly self-absorbed, unforthcoming appearance’. But Brooke also talks of the handsome spectacle of a White Helleborine in full flower when it resembles ‘on a small scale some exotic orchid from the tropics which has somehow contrived to stray into an English beech wood’. It enjoys a quiet existence under the grandest of beech trees.
Despite their shy nature, I hold a special affection for White Helleborines. During the summer of 2011, eleven years after moving into our house, a scattering of damasonium appeared under the beech tree at the bottom of the garden. I had initially dismissed the first one as an outlying lily-of-the-valley from a nearby flowerbed, never for a minute believing that this Cephalantheresque plant was actually a helleborine, only to discover that, as May moved into June, my preliminary hunch had been correct. Brooke mentions that ‘it has also been called the Lily-of-the-Valley Orchid, though the reason for this is not apparent’. I felt surprisingly smug upon reading this statement, for I knew exactly why it had been given this name. That year I counted more than fifty plants both under our tree and in the woods over the road. They flowered again in 2012 and had sent up more shoots that year, although they remained tightly in bud on the front lawn. The number of flowering plants has steadily diminished since that first discovery, but they still come up every year without fail, usually producing two or three large spikes among a scattering of smaller ones.
I emerged from the wood at the top of the hill, blinking slightly at the strength of the sun. The reserve looks down over the Thames as it meanders its way towards London, the water peacefully slipping by just as it had done more than 500 years ago when the Hart family installed their lock. I was surrounded by a panorama of softly undulating hills, one wooded slope rolling into the next. It was idyllic, so you can imagine my disappointment when the view became somewhat ruined by a thick white tape spread haphazardly across the hillside. Each year the warden cordons off the main group of Monkeys, arranging little pathways so that visiting orchid enthusiasts can still gain access to the best plants for photography. It is a necessary precaution, don’t get me wrong, but it detracts so much from one’s encounter with the orchids.
As I walked down one of the paths, so well used by this point that there was no grass left at all, I saw the first Monkey Orchids, standing timidly among the browned cowslips. There are no words to do justice to the extraordinary wackiness of these floral aristocrats, for aristocrats they are. The flowers, which crescendo open from the top down rather than the usual bottom to top, are white and pale purple in colour; each lip is moulded into a little monkey-like figure with a looping tail and long, flexible limbs. Some danced for joy at the sight of other Monkeys on the hill; others longed to race through the jungle of plants in their hillside meadow.
How or why they evolved is a question that still baffles even the most eminent of evolutionary biologists. What possible advantage could there be to having a monkey-shaped flower? Perhaps it’s merely a reduced landing pad for visiting insects, the curling appendages acting as runway lighting, but somehow that spoils the magic of it.
Brooke, like so many others, found the Monkey Orchid enthralling. He, too, acknowledges its aristocratic nature, ‘for about certain orchids one feels as one feels about human aristocrats, of whatever social rank, their affinity with the past, with a tradition surviving from an older world. Nor is this altogether fanciful, for the orchids are… an extremely ancient family, distinguished from other orders of plants not merely by their outward beauty or oddity but by the long and complex history of their floral evolution’.
But the Monkey Orchids aren’t the only floral spectacle on the hillside. During the 1997 and 1998 seasons, the people monitoring the Monkeys discovered the leaf rosette of a Lady Orchid, identified in 2001 when it flowered for the first time.2 Over subsequent years more appeared, but they looked different and people began to suspect there was something strange going on. It wasn’t until 2006, when one flowered, that they discovered to their amazement that it was a hybrid of the Lady Orchid and the Monkey Orchid, the first of its kind known to have occurred naturally in the UK. Its official name is a tongue-twisting mouthful: Orchis x angusticruris.
Since then the hybrids have thrived and now produce well over a hundred flowering spikes each spring, a figure that seems to increase every year. They are remarkable plants, swarming across the slope and turning the hillside pink. Morphologically, they appear more or less intermediate between the two species, the inflorescences consisting of heavily coloured, steroid-ridden Monkeys perched on the tall, robust stem of a Lady Orchid. They are enormous plants, full of teenage vigour.
A paper published by scientists at Kew Gardens in 2008 describes analyses that demonstrate that the hybrids are genetically closer to purpurea than simia. Their evidence suggests that the Lady is, pertinently, the mother, while the Monkey is the father.
While perusing the hybrids myself, I couldn’t help but notice that there were far more here than there had been four years before. And that made me wonder. What if this hybrid population was expanding exponentially, slowly outcompeting its parents? The Lady Orchids would surely disappear first, but were there enough Monkeys on the hillside to cope? Even if the hybrids didn’t outcompete their parents, would back-crossing3 occur? This would pose a rather interesting problem for conservationists. Do you protect this incredibly rare hybrid, a plant that grows nowhere else in the country, or do you suppress it so that it doesn’t wipe out (or genetically contaminate) the one remaining population of Monkey Orchids in the Thames Valley?
The Kew scientists once again offer an opinion. They’ve found that the hybrids do produce some fertile pollen and seeds, raising the possibility of back-crossing. Gene flow in this way would ‘contaminate’ the Monkey Orchid gene pool, blurring the lines between parent and hybrid. This has occurred in the past, as the study shows that the Monkeys have some DNA usually associated with Military Orchids, a third species, which had jumped across during a hybridisation event hundreds of years ago.
To top off this confusing scenario, the Lady Orchids at Hartslock have been shown to be more closely related to continental than Kentish plants, arriving either on high-level air currents from the south, or more likely, by direct introduction by humans – either deliberately or not. Some conservationists might therefore be inclined to order the swift removal of all the hybrids and Ladies from the reserve. However, the authors take a more optimistic view, as voiced by the reserve warden Chris Raper: ‘It is my theory that in the past the three species [Lady, Monkey and Military] grew in colonies scattered all along the south Chilterns… They probably hybridised much more frequently and the resulting plants were consequently harder to split into three distinct species. Far from being a problem, the new hybrids might actually be returning the population to a more natural state where occasional mixing of genes between the species was normal.’
They look like they are here to stay, then. I personally agree with the view of the authors, as the hybrids are clearly successful and not currently doing any damage to the native Monkeys. The introduction of a few genes from such strong, healthy plants could help the Hartslock Monkey Orchids to rediscover their vigour. If anything, the effects of the sustained presence of both the hybrid and the Lady Orchids at Hartslock will be very interesting to watch over the coming years.
During the next hour or so a steady trickle of people came and went. Some were armed with enormous cameras on ostrich-legged tripods. Others would modestly produce a small compact to take a photo before hurriedly hiding it away again, as if they were embarrassed by the size of it. Watching orchid hunters is actually quite entertaining.
I sat and picnicked on the hillside, away from the Monkey Orchids and their admirers, with a wonderful view out over the surrounding Oxfordshire countryside. Every now and then the warm buzz of insects would be interrupted by the sound of a train sliding by in the distance. Chaffinches were trilling from the hedges and sheep bleated in the fields down in the valley. A barge chugged silently past on the river below, cutting a wide ‘V’ shape into the otherwise glass-like water.
I sat and read my book, The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane, content with my morning’s work and perfectly at peace with the surrounding landscape. Nature has its ways of communicating with the soul, and I was really benefitting from spending so much time outdoors, particularly after such a long winter. Eventually, after a great deal of internal persuasion, I dragged myself back down to the car, passing once again through the taped-off areas of orchids. I imagined tails curling around blades of grass as they swung through the sward, scampering mischievously up oats and bromes, each little monkey twisting and turning. I marvelled at every last plant, feeling sorry that I had to leave but assuring myself that I would return one day to see the Monkeys again.
Job Edward Lousley, known as Ted, was one of the best British botanists of the twentieth century and his contributions to the BSBI were invaluable. Lousley’s interest in natural history began when, at the age of twelve, he was invited, along with a keen gang of similarly minded boys, to use the facilities at the South London Botanical Institute by W. R. Sherrin, then the curator. Sherrin would nurture their interests, taking them out on bicycles in the Surrey countryside to learn about natural history. By the time Ted was fifteen, he had already begun collecting specimens for a herbarium that eventually became the largest privately owned collection of its kind in the country.
In 1926, when he was nineteen, he was encouraged by Sherrin to join the Watson Botanical Exchange Club and then the Botanical Society and Exchange Club of the British Isles, which over time has evolved into the BSBI. His membership of such clubs allowed him to discuss his botanical interest with experts and the highly regarded collectors of the time. Before long, Lousley had developed an unrivalled knowledge of the British flora; he had slowly been adding to his herbarium and studying as much of the available literature as possible. He would also plan botanical expeditions accross the country, drawing up meticulous itineraries to ensure that he saw everything he wished to see.
At a relatively early age, his work on the genus Rumex (docks) and introduced plants earned him an international reputation and he made regular appearances on the radio. His wide range of publications include Wild Flowers of Chalk and Limestone in the Collins New Naturalist series and the Flora of Surrey. The latter documented his love for the county but remained unpublished until after his death in 1976. Lousley made a number of important botanical discoveries during his lifetime, the most noteworthy being that of the Military Orchid in Buckinghamshire. It was this population I had decided to try and track down.
The Military Orchid was first recorded in Britain at the same time as the Monkey Orchid by Christopher Merrett in 1666. Early records (which are unreliable given the tendency to confuse militaris with simia and purpurea) suggest that the plant once grew in Surrey and Kent but, like the Monkey Orchid, its stronghold has always been in the Chilterns. It was once relatively common in this area, but the ploughing up of downland and over picking by collectors in the 1800s played a significant part in its subsequent decline. It steadily became rarer, its appearance mythical, until it died out altogether, probably when the last few plants were collected from a site in Hertfordshire.
The Military Orchid, sought after with such tenacity by Victorian collectors, passed into folklore. Orchid enthusiasts dreamed of its rediscovery. Years went by without even a murmur. Jocelyn Brooke, ever the optimist, wrote in 1950 that ‘it is possible that militaris still lingers on in a few secluded spots in one or other of these districts’ but even he, having heard no recent news of it, admits that ‘it seems all too probable that this charming orchid has gone the way of scarlet and pipe-clay, Ouida’s guardsmen, and all the other more romantic appurtenances of soldiering’.
This sad sentiment echoed the thoughts of many of militaris’s admirers, those who longed to see the deep roseine purple of this most royal of orchids once again in our woods. Little did they know, however, that it had indeed been rediscovered, somewhat by chance, at Homefield Wood in Buckinghamshire by Ted Lousley. He recounts the rediscovery in Wild Flowers of Chalk and Limestone, detailing the thirty-nine plants in the colony, eighteen of which had flowering spikes. ‘In a way it was just luck,’ he writes; ‘the excursion was intended as a picnic, so I had left my usual apparatus at home and took only my notebook. But I selected our stopping places on the chalk with some care, and naturally wandered off to see what I could find. To my delight I stumbled on the orchid just coming into flower.’ This day in May 1947 has become legendary, fast-tracking its way to fame as one of the most significant events in British orchid history.
Perhaps wisely, Lousley told no one the location of the newly discovered militaris, fearing that collectors would obtain this information and descend upon the site. It was of course searched for, but remained a secret for nine years, until it was eventually found by Francis Rose and Richard Fitter in 1956. They subsequently sent a postcard to Lousley with the enigmatic message: ‘The soldiers are at home in their fields.’ However, the secret remained closely guarded until 1975, when BBOWT, who had begun managing Homefield Wood in 1969, released the news that Orchis militaris had once again been found growing in Britain. A large photograph of the orchid appeared in the Daily Mirror on 11th June with the accompanying headline: ‘The Beauty that Must Blossom in Secret’. It was not until the late 1980s that the exact location was released to the public.
Since its discovery in 1947, the colony has steadily increased in size, spreading from the Enclosure to the Meadow in 1983, and then to the 1985 Clearing4 in 1995. The number of flowering plants grew to forty-five in 1995, and passed the one hundred mark for the first time in 2002. The Military Orchid has since been discovered at a second site in the Chilterns and at Mildenhall in Suffolk, where a large colony grows in an old chalk pit. Work by Qamaruz-Zaman and colleagues in 2002 has shown that the three British colonies are genetically distinct and may therefore signify three separate colonisations from Europe. They are all incredibly important.
After the views and scorching slopes of Hartslock, it was nice to arrive at Homefield Wood and slip into the woodland rides, the air still warm from a day in the sun. On my arrival there had been five cars wedged into a small area near the entrance to the wood. It was obvious why they were there, of course, without even seeing their owners. Three of the cars were bumper 4x4s and that could only mean equally eye-catching Nikons and Canons.
Planes descended overhead on their way into Heathrow, but otherwise only the sharp cries of a couple of jays broke the silence of the wood. It did not take long to find the BBOWT nature reserve and then, shortly after, the path that took me into the Meadow. Despite the late hour, the heat from the sun remained strong and butterflies abounded, bustling from flower to flower, twayblade to trefoil. I was on my own.
Unlike the tiny Monkeys at Hartslock, the Military Orchid commands attention. I was immediately drawn to the stately rose and purple spikes towering above the other orchids. They were majestic, lordly, imperial; I couldn’t come up with an adjective that would do them justice. Each enormous plant was an amalgamation of purples, holding a diadem of magenta flowers, a picture of pure power and strength. The resemblance to a soldier was striking, albeit one clothed in deep-pink and baggy pyjama bottoms; its pale, greyish-pink helmet appeared absurdly big but nevertheless gave the air of being prepared for war. I amused myself by inserting a short length of grass into the curl of its right arm: now it had a sword.
The first description of militaris comes from John Gerard’s Historie of Plants in 1597: ‘Souldier’s Satyrion bringeth forth many broad large and ribbed leaves, spread upon the ground like unto those of the great Plantaine: among the which riseth up a fat stalke full of sap or juice, clothed or wrapped in the like leaves even to the tuft of flowers, whereupon doe grow little flowers resembling a little man, having a helmet upon his head, his hands, and legs cut off; white upon the inside, spotted with many purple spots, and the backe part of the flower of a deeper colour tending to redness. The rootes be greater stones than any of the kinds of Satyrions.’ Amusingly, ‘Souldier’s Satyrion’ literally means soldier’s testicles. Of all the orchids known to Gerard, it seems militaris has the biggest balls.
I began noticing people walking down the track next to the nature reserve carrying the kind of camera equipment I would associate with the owners of Mercedes M-class and BMW X5s. They had to be coming from the Enclosure. Indeed, after five minutes of exploration, during which time I found three Fly Orchids by the side of the track, I entered another small paddock that had been fenced off from the surrounding woodland to discourage deer. Despite their grandeur, Military Orchids smell of cat pee, yet would still be a tasty snack for a passing doe.
I paused briefly in the Enclosure, putting myself in the shoes of Lousley. This was the very spot where he had made his serendipitous discovery sixty-six years before. I tried to imagine what he must have felt upon spotting a purple spike cast in a shaft of sunlight, just a short distance away from where his family and friends were eating their picnic.
I walked on, passing through the gate that took me into the final area, the 1985 Clearing, where the plants have flowered every year since 1995. It had an imperious presence here, and you could feel it. Militaris was lit up in the evening sunlight like paper lanterns. Its authority was tangible.
There were more Fly Orchids here, hundreds, and out in the open they were stunning, the light glinting off the band of iridescent blue-silver around the fly’s middle. One plant had seven flowers and another four to come, making it the biggest I’d ever seen. Someone had begun to mark each plant with sticks but had clearly given up, so vast was the colony. It was encouraging to see this little orchid growing so abundantly, albeit under the protective gaze of its military guards.
Orchids, indeed many wildflowers, can form powerful associations with certain moments in our past. They will often grow in places with stories to tell, where you can feel a real sense of spirit and history. Jocelyn Brooke’s love for orchids is epitomised by his obsession with the Military Orchid, which had completely and utterly captured his imagination: ‘At this period – about 1916 – most little boys wanted to be soldiers, and I suppose I was no exception. The Military Orchid had taken on a kind of legendary quality, its image seemed fringed with the mysterious and exciting appurtenances of soldiering, its name was like a distant bugle call, thrilling and rather sad, a cor au fond du bois [a horn in the woods]. The idea of a soldier, I think, had come to represent for me a whole complex of virtues which I knew that I lacked, yet wanted to possess: I was timid, a coward at games, terrified of the aggressively masculine, totemistic life of the boys at school; yet I secretly desired, above all things, to be like other people. These ideas had somehow become incarnated in Orchis militaris.’
Sadly Brooke never found a British Military Orchid. He hunted endlessly, dreaming of finding this one plant and all that it represented for him. Had he found it, would he have realised that he already possessed the makings of a soldier? Time was to tell.
As impressed as I was with militaris, I must admit that the whole experience felt slightly fake. The Military Orchid encapsulates great rarity and beauty and as a result Homefield Wood has attracted orchid enthusiasts like moths to a flame ever since it became known as the site of the soldier. Unfortunately, good-natured as we are, we visitors constitute a significant threat to any place where rare plants have been sighted, trampling grass paths around fields and woods, and, full of botanical exuberance, often failing to spare a thought for the surrounding vegetation. Here in Homefield Wood, many individual orchids are now enclosed in open-topped chicken-wire cages, giving the somewhat bizarre impression of being on the local allotment.
I had, perhaps naïvely, always associated rare orchids with locations steeped in history that are truly wild. I’d come across such places in the Hampshire hangers and the Burren, but for the most part it is but an idyllic dream. Visiting Hartslock and Homefield Wood made me realise that as nice as it would be for wildness and rare orchids to go hand in hand, the constant stream of admirers during the flowering season could never allow this to occur.
Rare orchids are mollycoddled. We fence them in to keep the deer out, we graze their paddocks to optimise growing conditions; we even have to provide them with protection against our own elbows and knees. Sometimes they thrive in their barricaded sanctuaries, sometimes we get it wrong, but the unfortunate necessity of these practices can make their environments seem alienating and unnatural. Nevertheless, at Homefield Wood, conservation work has been an unrivalled success, and the Military Orchid marches on.
1 A genetic bottleneck occurs when environmental conditions result in a rapid decrease in population size to a very small number of individuals. The population recovers, but with a much-reduced gene pool.
2 Molecular analysis by Bateman et al. (2008) demonstrated that Orchis purpurea at Hartslock is derived from Continental stock, arriving either on high-level air currents from the south, or more likely, by direct introduction by man (either deliberately or not).
3 Back-crossing is the fertilisation of a parent (Monkey or Lady) with fertile pollen from a hybrid.
4 These are the names given to the three distinct areas where the Military Orchids grow at Homefield Wood.