‘We shall not cease from exploration,
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.’
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965)
Dorset
2nd September
I needed a pick-me-up. It was the end of a long summer of travelling; running around and trying to tick everything off a list. Suzie’s rejection was still raw. My life for the last five months – for the last twelve years – had been defined, directed, utterly dictated by orchids. They’d had total control over me for so long, governing my every move.
I’d had a successful summer, but there was one orchid I still had to find: the Autumn Lady’s-tresses. Edward Step, in Wild Flowers in their Natural Haunts, introduces it as ‘the last of the [Orchid] tribe we shall meet this year’. I liked the idea I was going to ‘meet’ them.
After the excitement of seeing Violet Helleborines and the realisation that I was only one orchid away from finding all fifty-two, there was a long wait. August slipped into September with a worrying lack of Autumn Lady’s-tresses. I was aware that the late season might still be affecting things, but, for the most part, the orchids had more or less caught up with themselves. The Irish Lady’s-tresses and Violet Helleborines had flowered when I would have expected them to in a normal season and so during the final week of August, when hundreds of Autumn Lady’s-tresses would normally be coming into flower, I was a little surprised that I still hadn’t heard anything.
The schools went back at the beginning of September and, for the second time in as many years, I was left feeling rather lost. The summer was drawing to a close: blackberries were ripening into plump purple clusters in the hedgerows, the hay meadows on the hill were yellowing, and the combine harvesters were busy reaping the rewards of a warm and bountiful growing season.
Autumn Lady’s-tresses is one of the commoner orchid species in the UK and so seeing it wouldn’t be too big a problem once it eventually arrived on the scene. After much deliberation, I decided to go back to Durlston Country Park to see number fifty-two. It seemed satisfyingly symmetrical to try and end my adventure in the same place that I had started it five months previously.
Autumn Lady’s-tresses was the first orchid, along with the Common Twayblade, ever to be recorded in Britain, as early as 1548. William Turner wrote in his Names of Herbes that it ‘groweth beside Syon [Sion House, opposite Kew Gardens] …it bryngeth forth whyte floures in the ende of harveste, and it is called Lady traces’. Its fondness for short, dry turf near the sea is well known, but it also grows on ancient earthworks and limestone pavements. Somewhat bizarrely, it has also developed a liking, too, for people’s front lawns. My grandparents have a small population in their garden on the Isle of Wight, nurtured lovingly for the past decade. Under the watchful eye of my grandmother, my grandfather will carefully skirt the area of the lawn where the orchids grow with the lawnmower each summer. They are extremely proud of them. I’d started monitoring this little colony years before first encountering them on the Dorset coast.
Durlston was bathed in a rich golden sunlight as I pulled into the car park in the late afternoon. I had read on their website that the Autumn Lady’s-tresses were in flower on the clifftop. This was it. A moment that would hold so much significance for me: it would represent the culmination of my ten-year obsession with seeing every British and Irish orchid. I had come full circle. And so for the fifty-second time, I packed my camera in its bag and swung it over my shoulder, enjoying the eager anticipation that had preceded every species I had seen that year.
The clifftop path was warm. A light breeze played across my bare arms, browned by hours spent orchid hunting in the sun. I thought back to the beginning of the season and the icy winds that had buffeted me and the Early Spider Orchids: what a difference a season makes. The meadows were now a sweep of golden brown, or already cut short ready for the winter. The sea of yellow cowslips had long gone. I passed the little hollow where I had seen my first Early Purple Orchid back in May and grinned: I couldn’t help it.
I walked down into the gulley where the writer of Durlston’s daily diary had reportedly seen some that very morning. Electric Adonis blues and chocolatey brown arguses chased each other through the long grass, buffeted from time to time by the wind. Bromes and oat-grasses shifted softly with metronomic regularity. Looking east, I could make out the Needles running off the end of the Isle of Wight into a glittering turquoise sea.
I slipped into orchid-hunting mode as I began my descent, sweeping the ground with my eyes: back and forth, back and forth, searching for that tiny white spiral that would complete my summer’s endeavour. The sward was quite long here, which meant spotting small flowers was harder than usual. Butterflies descended on the purple button-like flowers of common knapweed. Where the grass was shorter there were the bright-pink stars of common centaury and pale-lilac harebells, heads bowed in silent meditation.
In the end it happened very quickly. I was walking down the precipitous side of the gulley when I saw a slender twirl of white. There, poking out from behind a tuft of yellowing grass, was an Autumn Lady’s-tresses. Its snowy flowers twisted skyward: a bride on her wedding day. Extraordinary. I sat down, a smile spreading across my face. It was finished. I had seen them all: every last one of them.
I suddenly felt very tired. An adventure that had lasted five months – and many more of planning before that – had come to an end. At the age of twelve, I remember glancing through the few pages at the end of my Collins Wildflower Guide that were decorated with orchids. They were beautiful, rare, mysterious, fanciful and full of intrigue: I longed to find them. Never did I imagine that I would see all of them. As far as I knew I was the first person to have done so in one summer. It was a humble achievement but one I felt incredibly proud of. During my quest, I had driven nearly 10,000 miles, taken more than 50,000 photos, passed through forty-eight counties and been through two cars. I’d travelled by plane, train, bike and car and had walked miles in search of some of our islands’ most precious flowers. It had brought inspiration and ecstasy, panic and fear, happiness, heartbreak and pure, unadulterated Orchidelirium. It had been quite an adventure and, if nothing else, a wonderful way to see the country.
Rushing around Britain had meant spending considerably longer on the road than in the wild confines of nature. Yet every time I arrived in a quiet pocket of the countryside and turned myself over to orchid hunting, I got lost in a world where material concerns became futile in the presence of wildflowers, birdsong and summer sun. Searching for orchids places me in my element, brings me closer to who I really am and allows the stress and strain of everyday life to melt into nothing.
As the early-evening sun flooded the meadows, Lady’s-tresses twinkled pearly white in the grass, tiny ivory helices delicately decorating the downland. Down below, the sea crashed rhythmically against the cliffs. As I reached the end of the reserve and turned to walk back, I stood for a moment, looking out over Durlston and the sparkling water, to the Isle of Wight beyond. Taking all of this in, I felt a deep sense of completeness, at having tied up my fascination with these charismatic plants in such fitting circumstances. It had been an exhausting summer, but one I would remember for the rest of my life.
Released from an exhilarating summer of orchid hunting, my thoughts began to turn towards Oxford and beginning the next chapter of my life at university. Would my new friends understand why I had spent my gap year looking for orchids, instead of jetting off to South East Asia? I wondered if I would find people who shared my interests; whether there would be another Suzie. Had that been my one opportunity? Should I have fought harder to make sure she didn’t disappear from my life?
Despite completing my task, I didn’t feel quite finished with Autumn Lady’s-tresses. Two weeks later, I was in the New Forest, on the flat, open plain where I had reached the halfway mark with Lesser Butterfly Orchids earlier in the year – a lone figure, lying on the ground, twisted and contorted as I photographed two Autumn Lady’s-tresses side by side. This large expanse of nibbled grass was one of the last places you would expect to find orchids, but there are thousands of Autumn Lady’s-tresses here between the round bobbles of horse dung. They were already producing leaves ready for the following year: unlike many orchids, they overwinter as a leaf rosette. When the plant produces a flowering spike, it comes up adjacent to next year’s leaves. This was, I supposed, their way of hibernating. I was struck by their remarkable resilience. These tiny, delicate spikes are grazed all summer, trampled underfoot by both humans and ponies, and experience searing summer temperatures out in the open. And yet every autumn they prepare next year’s leaves, ready to go all over again.
But as impressive as this is, the world might become a bit too much for them – and the other fifty-one orchids across the country. Climate change is having a strange effect on the orchids in Britain: there are winners and losers. Some – the winners – are benefiting from warmer temperatures and beginning to spread northwards, expanding their range. The Lady Orchid is one of these: historically confined to Kent, it has begun appearing across the south of the country. The Lizard Orchid is also on the increase, with sites being discovered as far west as Bristol in recent years. However, this effect is temporary. As climate change continues along its current trajectory, the south will become too hot and dry for these species and they will be forced to migrate northwards. At the same time, there is likely to be a shift in the composition of the British orchid flora.
As we lose some species, others will be welcomed in from the continent. Small-flowered Tongue Orchids have already been found, whether naturally occurring or not, along the south coast. In 2014, a Sawfly Orchid was found in Dorset, a relative of the sexually deceptive Bee, Fly and Spider Orchids usually found in the Mediterranean basin. In June 2017, as I write, the largest population of Greater Tongue Orchids ever seen in Britain has been discovered in Essex. This exciting new mix of species will be moving north with climate change and, provided they can make the jump across the Channel, the number of records will surely increase over the coming decades.
It won’t be a surprise, then, to learn that the losers are more typically northern species like Bog, Coralroot and Small White Orchids. Researchers at Kew Gardens have also found that the Fly Orchid and, surprisingly, the Man Orchid are struggling. Given the Man Orchid is closely related to the Lady Orchid and generally a southern species, we might have expected it to be temporarily benefiting from increasing temperatures. Such puzzles highlight the importance of conducting long-term studies to establish the effects of a warming climate.
In the 1970s, Professor Mike Hutchings of the University of Sussex started what became the longest-running ecological study of any orchid species. For thirty-two years, he and his colleagues meticulously mapped and recorded a population of Early Spider Orchids on the South Downs near Brighton. Each spring, they would take detailed measurements of size, whether the orchids flowered or set seed, when they flowered and how many blooms were produced. One study with this vast dataset, led by Karen Robbirt, showed that the flowering period for these orchids changes from year to year, as you might expect. In 2013, they would have flowered much later than normal, because of the late arrival of spring. While it is impossible to extract any meaningful pattern over a few years, this thirty-two-year dataset has been used to show that for every one-degree increase in mean spring temperature, the orchids start to flower six days earlier. The same pattern is observed when analysing herbarium specimens – plants collected, dried and pressed – in conjunction with historical weather records from the past 167 years. These studies have revealed how flowering is affected by weather and a changing climate.
Early Spider Orchids are clearly being affected by a warming climate, but an even bigger danger could soon present itself. It turns out that the emergence period of Andrena bees is much more susceptible to climate change than the flowering period of the orchids. The female bees will be emerging much earlier, coinciding with the orchids flowering. If presented with a choice, the male bees will almost always choose the real female, rather than the fake. So, as the climate warms, the relationship between insect and plant will be knocked out of synchrony. We could be seeing a new kind of calamity for the orchids that has nothing to do with the threat of over-zealous Victorian orchid hunters.
True, despite the fervour of Victorian collectors and the threats of climate change, Britain has, to date, only actually lost one orchid to extinction: the Summer Lady’s-tresses. Given our natural bias towards saving good-looking organisms, it is hardly surprising that orchids have been a focus point for many conservationists in the UK (I do wonder whether the same level of protection that’s provided for the Lady’s Slipper would have been given to the Narrow-lipped Helleborine were it in the same perilous position). Nonetheless, despite the best efforts of Natural England, Plantlife, the Wildlife Trusts and countless other organisations, almost half of our native orchids are classified as Red List species, meaning they are threatened in the UK. Worryingly, some of these species are often thought to be relatively common, like Autumn Lady’s-tresses and Greater Butterfly Orchid.
So why put such an emphasis on protecting orchids? Our native species, though beautiful, are not particularly useful. They don’t, as far as we know, hold the key to curing illnesses or providing food. Firstly, conserving orchids has a positive impact on other, less threatened species. They are extremely fussy plants, meaning that rarity often reflects very specific growing conditions. The intricacies of orchids are also an exciting way in which to get children interested in the natural world. A flower that looks like a bee? That was enough for me.
But while many of our rarest orchids are available to visit in nature reserves, they often lack a certain wildness that would serve as inspiration for children. When I was a teenager, I hated going to organised reserves, preferring to plunge into nature where it was wild and uncontrolled. The rarest orchids are almost always in nature reserves and in some cases they are put behind bars. Military Orchids in the Chilterns and Late Spider Orchids at Wye are caged, while the Monkey Orchids at Hartslock and Lady’s Slippers at Gait Barrows are roped off as if they’re in a botanical zoo. Obviously this is a necessary requirement to protect the plants from grazers and human trampling – and we would certainly be in a sorry state without them – but throughout the summer I lamented that it has reached this stage. During my childhood, I spent hours fantasising about coming across populations of rare orchids in the depths of the countryside. Discovering a forgotten glade in the woods, scattered with the royal purple and lilac spikes of Military Orchid is every orchidophile’s dream.
Rarity, beauty and wildness should surely be intrinsically linked, epitomising that magical, mysterious power that nature can hold over you. But it is not always the case. With structured nature reserves, the thrill of the chase is, at least to some extent, plucked from your grasp, the rarities served to you on a plate. The species I enjoyed finding the most that summer were the ones holed up in remote, wild corners of the country: the Frog Orchids on the Outer Hebrides, for example, or the unassuming Dense-flowered Orchid that took so long to find in the Burren. The feeling of satisfaction and relief after hours of stressful searching for Fen Orchids and Lindisfarne Helleborines was second to none. These were places where you could dive in and not worry about paths, or where you were and weren’t allowed to go, and how you should feel about different things.
So are nature reserves helping our orchids? The answer, unquestionably, is yes: without them we would undoubtedly have lost more than just Summer Lady’s-tresses. But by investing so much in protecting individual species, they risk becoming as separated from the wild as from the forces that are wreaking destruction. Perhaps we also need nature reserves to place more emphasis on guarding wilderness, rather than just particular species or habitats.
This boils down to an age-old debate in conservation: should we protect the individual or the environment that allowed that individual to evolve? This was a question that had to be answered at Hartslock ten years ago. With the population of Lady x Monkey hybrids breeding rampantly, the Monkey Orchid gene pool is at risk of dilution. Given this is one of three Monkey Orchid populations in the country, many people were understandably concerned and some would have seen the hybrids removed from the hillside. Those involved with managing the site have decided otherwise, though, opting to protect process rather than individuals.
This is a debate highly relevant to my current line of work. Having enjoyed a wonderful three years studying biology at university, I have somewhat inevitably returned to orchids. My PhD is looking at the genus Orchis, and specifically the four British anthropomorphic species: Man, Lady, Monkey and Military Orchids. These plants look very different. So different, in fact, that anyone could sit down with a simple botanical key and identify each one having never seen or heard of them before. And yet hybridisation is a common phenomenon.
What I saw occurring between Monkey and Lady Orchids at Hartslock was just the beginning. Across Europe, whenever any of these four species grow together, they simply can’t keep their hands off one another and hybridise rampantly, forming hordes of intermediate orchids. These hybrid plants are then able to successfully pollinate each other and their parent plants, resulting in extensive hybrid swarms; where individual specimens occupy a varied position on a more or less continuous scale between one parent and the other. Sometimes they look like one of the parents, while others are perfect intermediates. My task, then, is to begin to understand why these four species remain distinct. Why haven’t they formed one large hybrid super-species? Why do they continue to trade genes with each other? And what can we do to protect endangered populations of these orchids?
I’m incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to develop my interest in these plants further, and to apply what I discover to conservation efforts across Britain and Europe. It’s exciting to be at the forefront of science and helping to protect my beloved orchids. There will inevitably be a few people who don’t appreciate my anthropomorphising of the orchids, but so many species are predisposed towards such comparisons. How can you not see a frolicking frog, a mischievous monkey or a bumbling bee when it’s presented on a plate for you?
I sat cross-legged on the short turf in the middle of the New Forest, all this ahead of me, though I didn’t know it then. My quest was complete. I had laughed, wept and seen some beautiful places. I had been soaked and stung, roasted and bitten, sunburned, rejected, rendered speechless and struck by the generosity of some incredible people. I’d learned about genetics, evolution, climate change and the stranger margins of British plant-hunting history.
Orchids had been at the centre of my life for more than a decade. From that first Bee Orchid on Figsbury Ring, to this summer spent hunting the whole clan, it had been an incredible journey.
A blackbird, tender and melodious, began serenading the open plain as the day drew to a close. The air was still and laced with the familiar aroma of heather and peat. And as the sun sank towards the arboreal horizon, with 10,000 Autumn Lady’s-tresses bathed in the fragile warmth of September, my Orchidelirium was finally laid to rest.