‘It is a piece of weakness and folly merely to value things because of their distance from the place where we are born, thus men have travelled far enough in the search of foreign plants and animals, and yet continue strangers to those produced in their own natural climate.’
Martin Martin, A Late Voyage to St Kilda (1698)
Wrexham, Northumberland and Cumbria
July 2013
I Love My Job: Leif Bersweden, 19, Orchid Hunter. That was the title of my interview with the Royal Horticultural Society. They had contacted me regarding their new initiative to dispel myths about young people and plants, and had asked if I would be willing to be interviewed as part of a series involving people under the age of thirty interested in botany and horticulture.
The interview was being conducted at the RHS Flower Show at Tatton Park. I was nervous as I drove up the M6 towards Manchester, different scenarios looping through my mind. I tried to compose answers to the questions I would most likely be asked and talked out loud to an invisible interviewer.
I pulled into the car park moments before I had agreed to meet the organisers. Unfortunately, in my panic at being late, I had parked at the opposite end to the show and had to run across the site, not entirely sure where I was going.
I arrived half an hour late, out of breath and sweating, spluttering my apologies to anyone and everyone. Before I knew what was happening, a microphone was being attached to my collar and someone was reeling off a list of instructions about what was going to happen. Then, suddenly, I was all on my own. As the camera panned towards me, I felt a bead of sweat trickle down my back. My forehead was shining. Stephanie asked me a question and my mind went blank, sucked into the depths of the lens.
Eventually I started to speak, and became aware of a crowd forming around me as people started listening in. Maybe they thought I was famous. I stumbled my way through questions, gulping for air: I hadn’t realised how breathless I was. I could hear my monotonous voice droning on. My throat felt dry and scratchy. Didn’t they have some water around here? They filmed me looking at the flowers neatly lined up for the show, which was ironic, given none of them were wild or native.
After an hour of takes, during which the crowd listened intently to my babbling, they were finally satisfied with the footage they had managed to compile and I was free to go. Sitting in the hot car as I queued to leave, I replayed everything I’d said over and over, cringing at how pathetic I’d sounded. I was desperately embarrassed and keen to escape.
I had decided to make use of the trip north to visit some local orchid sites and had arranged to meet Suzie for the afternoon. I collected her from the station and drove across the border into Wales. We picked up where we had left off and I was immediately comfortable again as we laughed about some of my ridiculous interview answers.
We were hoping to find a large population of Dune Helleborine, a species neither of us had seen before. This orchid is a special one, because Britain is the only place in the world where it is found. It is an endemic. Being a small island far from the equator and the tropics, Britain has very few endemic species, so the Dune Helleborine is a big deal. It has had a long and complicated taxonomic history. First granted full species status in 1926, it was then relegated to being a subspecies of Narrow-lipped Helleborine, an unusual orchid of beech woods in the south. After much toing-and-froing, DNA work carried out in 2002 by scientists at Edinburgh University established that it was genetically distinct from the Narrow-lipped Helleborine, and therefore confirmed as Epipactis dunensis.
There are two forms of Dune Helleborine. One grows on the north-west coast of England and Wales on sandy soils and in the dunes, giving the species its English and Latin names. The other grows inland, most notably on the zincheavy soils of the Tyne Valley in Northumberland. For some years these plants were considered to be a separate Tyne Helleborine, but research published in 2002 confirmed it was the same species. Since then, populations have been discovered in strange places like gardens and university car parks.
We arrived in the Alyn Valley near Wrexham with the late-afternoon sun still hot on the tarmac. A small path passed through a stand of trees and out into a meadow. As we walked, I pointed out common bird’s-foot trefoil and started teaching Suzie how to identify some of the commoner wildflowers. She quickly picked up musk mallow, rough hawkbit and common centaury. I was in my element. We joked around and swapped stories about our families as we walked, content in each other’s company.
I was showing her the various features of common knapweed when she suddenly caught my eye and smiled: I paused, not quite recognising the emotion that had flitted so close. Feeling myself blush, I turned back to the knapweed in my hand and tried to gather my wandering thoughts.
After a short lesson about centauries, we entered the pine woodland, our feet slipping slightly on the sandy soil. The wood was stretched thin, light spilling in from above. We fell seamlessly into orchid-hunting mode, as if we’d been practising for years, and it immediately became an unspoken competition to find the first Dune Helleborine. We moved through the woodland in tandem, several metres apart, covering as wide an area as possible. Goldcrests seeped from the gilded treetops, occasionally visible as they flitted between branches. The air was warm and laced with thyme.
We slid down a bank, triggering miniature rivers of sand, and passed between willows and birches. Yellow bird’s-nest sprung up like meerkats on the vantage point of small mossy hillocks. They are weird, beige-banana-coloured plants that are dependent on a fungus for food just like the Bird’s-nest Orchid.
Suzie was the first to find a helleborine: not a Dune, but a Green-flowered. It was tiny and had only three flowers. They hung down melancholically, a peaceful green in the low light. It is a similar species that is predominantly self-pollinated. The Green-flowered Helleborine is one of the wariest British orchids, confining itself to quiet, shady woodland rides not often visited by the botanist. It is so shy that in many cases the flowers never actually open: self-fertilisation occurs and the flower turns to fruit before the bud has burst open. Of the few plants in front of us, only one had decided to brave the outside world this year, and we left it to its own devices at the bottom of the slope.
Suzie and I continued our race to be the first to find a Dune Helleborine. In the end, this wasn’t much of an achievement as the sandy woodland floor was, in places, carpeted with them. They were taller than the Green-flowered but slightly more yellow. The flowers, which weren’t widely open, were small, dull and cup-shaped. Behind the pale curl of the landing pad, the dark inside of the lip glistened with nectar. In the intense sunlight that chequered the sparse woodland floor, the modest spikes blended into the sparse vegetation. Another of the shy late-summer helleborines, these Dunes were enjoying the peace and quiet in the depths of the woodland.
The next day, I woke early and continued north to Northumberland, leaving Suzie behind as she had to go to work. On the way, I stopped off in County Durham to visit the nature reserve in Bishop Middleham quarry. I arrived just as the sun started spilling in from the top of the steep, man-made cliffs. Droplets of morning dew clung to each blade of grass so the ground glistened in the sun.
Abandoned in 1934, the magnesian limestone quarry rapidly became a haven for wildlife and is perhaps best known for its nationally important population of Dark Red Helleborines. These plants grow to three times the height of the less-sheltered colonies on the Great Orme. They were heavyweight helleborines: stunningly beautiful and well endowed with flowers. Each inflorescence was a mass of wine-coloured rubies and smelled like vanilla. Above the maroon lip, the golden-yellow anther caps acted as a warning or a sign of strength. In Wild Flowers, Sarah Raven describes them as ‘the femme fatale of wild flowers: sultry, proud and exotically beautiful, but maybe not entirely friendly’. I wasn’t sure about friendly, but they were certainly territorial. It was as if they were competing for the biggest hillocks; the tallest plants with the most flowers seemed to be found on the largest mounds.
A northern brown argus butterfly whirred silently past me and landed on some scabious. Next door were some Marsh Fragrant Orchids. At first sight, they looked just like the Heath and Chalk Fragrant Orchids: baby-pink and cylindrical, with horizontal sepals like the wings of a plane. But on closer inspection, I realised that there were tiny differences: a broad, open lip and a densely packed flower spike. The specific Latin name is densiflora, literally meaning ‘dense-flowered’.
The quarry was a wonderful, botanical treasure chest, but I couldn’t linger. I checked my watch and cursed. The timing for my next species was particularly tight.
For centuries, our native orchids have surprised, baffled and generally entertained botanists: populations grow and shrink, appear and disappear. But by the turn of the millennium, we assumed we’d found them all. In 2002, however, British orchidophiles were proven wrong. In the same study that finally put to rest the confusion surrounding the Dune Helleborine, scientists at Edinburgh University found that the population of helleborines on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, Northumberland, were sufficiently genetically distinct from those on the mainland to be considered a separate species. Out of nowhere, they had discovered a species of orchid never before identified: Lindisfarne Helleborine, or Epipactis sancta. The holy helleborine. This newly ordained member of the family is one of Britain’s few endemic species; the isolated population on Holy Island consists of approximately 300 plants. That’s 300 plants on the entire planet, and all here on this small island. There are more giant pandas in the world than there are Lindisfarne Helleborines.
There is only one road onto Holy Island: a long causeway from the English mainland. Twice a day, when the tide sweeps in, this road gets covered by strong currents of choppy water, cutting the island off from the mainland and leaving tourists stranded for a few hours. Today’s window: 10am – 4pm. I had to get on and off the island and find the helleborines before four or else get stuck there overnight and put my tight schedule for the next week out of sync.
With a recorded history that began with St Aidan in the sixth century AD, Holy Island has become a place of pilgrimage for Christians. Aidan, an Irish monk sent from the Scottish island of Iona, founded the Lindisfarne monastery. Northumberland’s patron saint, Saint Cuthbert, was abbot of the monastery and later Bishop of Lindisfarne. The island is famous for its castle, the Lindisfarne Gospels and the long line of wooden poles between the mainland and the island that mark the final mile of the Pilgrim’s Way.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I had been to Holy Island with my family before. It had been a civilised three-sided tug-of-war between the beach, the dunes and the churches. At that time, though, I was equally interested in spending time appreciating the island’s history as in scouring the dunes for plants. In the evening, when most of the tourists have left for the day, Holy Island is a place of serenity and peace that holds huge significance for my parents. After walking around the island, we would inevitably end up in the priory. At the time, I didn’t entirely understand why they spent so long sitting among the ruins, but reasoned they probably didn’t understand why I spent hours looking at orchids.
Two hours up the coast and I was driving onto Holy Island, a little later than I had hoped. The causeway was still slick and sandy but the waters had long since receded. The year I visited with my family, we had been too late to see the Lindisfarne Helleborines in flower, but I had still sought them out, managing to find several seeding spikes in the dunes. I therefore knew exactly where to find them.
It was a bright day and I was excited. The towering markers of the Pilgrim’s Way stretched back towards the mainland, evenly spaced like telegraph poles in the sand. The wet sand was a blurry mirror of the sky above, punctuated sporadically by the familiar coiled castings left by lugworms.
I made the decision to go and find the orchids before eating lunch; there was a band of grey creeping over the mainland, so I wanted to make the most of the sun while it was still out. My stomach grumbled as I set off down a gravel track. A couple of buildings stood at the end: a small stone house and a tiny watchtower with a stunted turret.
The track soon gave way to sand underfoot and the tickle-scratch of marram grass against my legs. My decision to wear walking boots had been a bad one: not because of the heat, but because of pirri-pirri-bur, an incredibly well-adapted Australian native plant that is causing havoc as an invasive around the coasts of the UK. The dunes on Holy Island are rampant with it. After two minutes in the dunes, I glanced down and groaned: my shoes were covered in big seed burs that clung to anything and everything with their barbed hooks. Initially I fought it, stopping every ten metres to carefully pry the burs from my shoes and socks, but after a while I gave up, reluctantly deciding to start the world’s biggest pirri-pirri-bur collection.
I circumnavigated a large dune slack and stopped for a while to take photos of some Marsh Helleborines. This was a species I’d seen the week before in Hampshire with my mother and Esther on a trip to an old waterworks. Miniature versions of the showy hybrids you find in hothouses, these orchids are a work of art. Inside their abundant flowers I saw pink washes of watercolour, deft strokes of yellow acrylics and inky dots and veins. The frilly, pure-white lip looks like a big Father Christmas beard.
I continued around the slack, confidently making my way over to the place where I had found the browning spikes of Lindisfarne Helleborine three years earlier. A dark green fritillary scudded over the sand in front of me, its wings a perfect horizontal plane burning orange and black.
After about ten minutes, I realised this wasn’t going to be as easy as I had thought. I walked back to the car park and retraced my steps, entering the dunes from a different direction, presuming I had simply gone wrong somewhere.
But I ended up in the same place. This was definitely where I saw them before, I was sure of it. As I set about combing the area between dune and slack again, it dawned on me, that the window of opportunity for seeing Lindisfarne Helleborines was becoming very small. The tide was already beginning to turn. By four o’clock, it would be impossible to drive back over the causeway to the mainland and to the campsite I had booked for the night. I really didn’t want to sleep in the car. The next day I had to drive over to Cumbria; there would be no time to wait around until late morning for the tide to go out. The clock was ticking.
I had totally given up on lunch now and began pacing up and down, my eyes exploring the blanket of creeping willow for a yellowish helleborine. I texted Suzie and got a response which did little to help my nerves:
Imagine if you messed up on Lindisfarne Helleborine!!
It was two-thirty. I had one hour: it was the sand dune fiasco with Fen Orchids all over again. Other than a spot near the car park, which had already proved fruitless, I didn’t know where else they grew.
The torment didn’t last much longer. Relief swept over me as I caught sight of a tiny yellow helleborine among the willow. I knelt to examine the plant, just to make sure it was a Lindisfarne Helleborine and not a stray, unnoticed Dune Helleborine. Sure enough, the stem had a greenish-yellow base: no violet to be seen. The petals and sepals were various shades of apple green. It was unmistakeably a Lindisfarne Helleborine. One hour to spare.
I had walked past this plant two or three times, but that was hardly surprising as it was such a small one. There was no excuse, however, for the full-sized Lindisfarne Helleborine. How had I missed that?
I rushed back to the car, having collected the necessary photos and looked forlornly at my walking boots which were festooned with large brown burs. I had twenty minutes left on this beautiful island and I had to spend it removing these seeds. I ended up throwing my socks away.
That evening, I cooked my dinner on the beach at Bamburgh, looking out over the Farne Islands. The sandy wall of the dune provided a comfy backrest. In the distance, Lindisfarne Castle formed a grey landmark on the horizon. There were long lines of footsteps up and down the beach and small waves lapping at the shoreline as the tide advanced. Seaweed-encrusted rocks lay scattered along the sand. I realised they were slabs of concrete: an old road, perhaps, claimed by the sea. The sun set behind Bamburgh Castle, a jet silhouette against the flame-red sky.
The day after Holy Island, I raced back down the coast to Newcastle and then across to Cumbria to find Creeping Lady’s-tresses. If I could find this little white orchid, I would really feel I was on the home straight. This was a crucial stage of the trip. If I failed here, it would mean a trip up to the vast pine forests of Scotland, something I didn’t have time for if I was going to catch the remaining helleborines flowering in the south. I also needed to be in Ireland in a few days’ time.
I had seen Creeping Lady’s-tresses once before. My family and I had been on holiday in the Lake District and made a special trip to Penrith so I could seek out a thriving population bang in the middle of Whinfell Forest Centre Parcs. We had turned up, completely unannounced, and been confronted by security, who looked on with incredulity as my father asked to be granted entry so that his son could find some plants. Given we were quite obviously on holiday and there were three young children in the back of the car, the guards understandably took one look and refused my father’s innocent request.
To my parents’ credit, they persisted. After a lot of talking and various phone calls to members of the Centre Parcs team we were eventually let through to see the orchids, escorted by two members of staff.
A few days prior to my trip up north, I had learned that Centre Parcs now refused all access to the orchids unless people were visiting someone on site or had paid to stay there themselves. Clearly I hadn’t been the only one snooping. This information came as a blow, because this is the only large population of Creeping Lady’s-tresses in England.
Fortunately, I was handed a lifeline: there was a second, much smaller colony a few miles east in a small out-of-the-way nature reserve called Cliburn Moss. Jeff Hodgson, whom I had met while looking at Sword-leaved Helleborines in June, had provided me with some details. However, I quickly realised that this was a very risky strategy: Jeff had signed off his email with ‘it will be very hit and miss I’m afraid Leif’.
I arrived in the late afternoon and pulled on my wellies before walking into the woods. It was muggy and the humid air clung to me. The moist scent of crushed pine needles rose up with every step as I followed the soft, slightly springy path into the trees. A crow started in the canopy and I could hear the dripping of a spring or boggy flush somewhere nearby.
After a few minutes, I noticed a thinning in the trees to my right. Using Jeff’s directions, I worked my way over to the end of the reserve, where I was instructed to leave the path. This was where it became a bit hit and miss, Jeff had said, and now I completely understood why: I was looking at a swamp. Pines and birches rose up at weird angles from the tangle of grasses, ferns and bilberry that made up the woodland floor. From the path, I could just about make out small dark areas where the grass hadn’t taken over: pools of water.
Taking a deep breath, I left the path, walking slowly, cautiously, along fallen tree trunks, peat islands, anything that avoided the ominous dark water. I ducked under trees, jumped over stagnant ditches and more than once nearly ended up falling into duckweed-smothered pools. It was like walking into a scene from Jurassic Park.
After several minutes of navigating my way through the maze, I stopped and looked around me. The view was the same no matter which way I turned. There was no sign of where I was or how to get out.
Glancing around, I picked out a couple of stands of pine trees. This was where I would start searching, I decided. The Creeping Lady’s-tresses would be on one of these islands where the pine roots had stabilised the peat, allowing the orchids to grow up from the thick carpet of needles that had collected over the years.
It was a task easier said than done, working my way from one pine island to the next, uncertain of each step and sinking into wet peat, or worse, if I wasn’t careful. It was quite beautiful really, when the sun came out and sent beams of light streaming between the trees. It became mysterious, idyllic almost. A rumble of thunder in the distance brought me back and I hastened my search. I didn’t fancy being here in the middle of a summer storm.
After the third pine island, I was beginning to wonder whether I would ever find the orchids growing in this swamp. I was even starting to hatch ambitious plans to try and sneak into Centre Parcs. But on the fifth or sixth pine island, I struck gold with more than ten Creeping Lady’s-tresses on the edge of a large pool of water. I sank to my knees, laughing with relief as I took in the short spindly spikes of small white flowers. Bizarrely, the flowers are densely hairy: an odd contrast with the delicacy of the petals. Like their arboreal masters, Creeping Lady’s-tresses are evergreen plants and therefore often easier to locate during the winter when the surrounding vegetation has died back. However, they are only in flower for a short stint during high summer.
I was just seeing a fragment of the British population here. This small colony was merely an advance search party, scouting southwards. In the north of Scotland, Creeping Lady’s-tresses form armies of thousands that conquer entire pine forests.
I spent the next hour attempting to photograph the plants. The fading light in the woods, not to mention their situation on the edge of the pool, made this an incredibly difficult task. The breeze that had been rustling through the trees before had picked up slightly, but the nearby bilberry was acting as a windbreak, allowing me some success with the tripod. One hundred photos later, I took a break and began flicking through the camera to scrutinise my work. Not good enough.
I glanced to my left and sighed. There was only one thing for it. Suspending the camera around my neck I got up and walked over to the pool. It was covered in a layer of duckweed: miniature green lily pads. Below it, the water was jet black, not giving anything away. Carefully, not wanting to slip all the way in, I lowered my foot into it and tried to find the bottom. When I did there was a hiss and a cloud of bubbles raced to the surface. The water line was only a couple of centimetres from the top of my welly. I put my other leg in, so now I was standing in the pool, the icy water pressing in from all sides. My father would tell me I had to suffer for my art. I was now in the perfect position, with Creeping Lady’s-tresses lining up in front of me behind veils of pond sedge.
I continued taking photos, trying to ignore the whine of mosquitoes, just occasionally standing up straight to slap one away. The sudden movement would send another stream of bubbles rushing to the surface and I would sink slightly lower, bringing the water perilously close to the top of my wellies. There was another rumble of thunder, closer now, but I ignored it: I was nearly done.
I was just about to start on the last plant, readjusting my footing in the pool and trying to ignore the numbness in my feet, when I suddenly became aware of a change in the atmosphere. The breeze dropped, as if a switch had been thrown. The air was dead still, cold now, and a menacing grey light had settled throughout the trees. Everything was silent. Even the mosquitoes had disappeared.
And then a crack of thunder split the sky above and well and truly snapped me out of my daydream. I waded as fast as I dared back to the edge of the pool and climbed out, swinging my camera over my head and packing it roughly into my bag. I tried to remember which way I had come from. It all looked horribly similar. I set off briskly in what I guessed was the right direction. Where I had wobbled precariously before, now I was nimble as I walked deftly along dead tree branches acting as makeshift bridges.
Another thunderclap rent the sky. It was dark now and the air was dull and sticky. This was going to be a big one, I thought, very aware that I had left all my waterproofs in the car. I stopped and looked around me. There, to my left, were a few triangles of light that surely marked the edge of the wood. Brushing the first few spots of rain from my arms, I spotted the path and began making my way through the messy jumble of grasses that had woven itself into a web above the dark peat. Suddenly, I was back on the pine needle path.
I took one look back, taking in the dank swamp with its dark pools and hardy trees, suddenly lit up with a flash of lightning. It was with great relief that I turned and ran back to the car. I opened the door and threw myself in, moments before the heavens opened.