‘Some have floures wherein is to be seene the shape of sundry sorts of living creatures, some the shape and proportion of flies, in others… humble bees.’

John Gerard, The Herball (1597)

Figsbury Ring
June 2001

Down in the hollows, the evening light cast long, exaggerated shadows. The air was still, the heat of the day lingering on the breeze. A blackbird sang somewhere in the scrub and around me grasshoppers chirped: a constant, comforting undertone. I was crouched in the lower branches of an ancient beech tree, searching for a route up. In the distance, I heard my mother call impatiently.

I dropped to the ground and careered through the grass before heading up the slope towards her. Almost at the top, I became distracted by something and bent down to take a closer look: swirls of yellow, orange and brown surrounded by three pink petals.

“Mum!” I yelled. A little further on my family stopped and turned. My mother shook her head, before slowly making her way over. As she reached my side, I pointed at my find.

“Mum, this flower looks just like a bee,” I said. I was seven years old and had found my first orchid.

My life would never be the same.

Who knows what it is that will spark a lifelong interest in us, rather than just a passing fancy? It seems trite to say that I found that first Bee Orchid beautiful – although I certainly did. It was more the mystery, I suppose, something like a question to be answered – the strange, hybrid ‘otherness’ of the flower which, even to my naïve boyhood self, signalled a fascinating transgression, a crossing of a line between two worlds that had previously seemed so different.

My interest in the natural world began through my father. As a child, I was fascinated by his hobbies. He was a keen ornithologist, and we would sit for hours in freezing bird hides, binoculars glued to our eyes, snacking on homemade sandwiches. I would bring my notebooks and obediently document the names of the ducks and waders as they flew by. One summer we constructed a sweep net using an old broom handle, a metal frame and some bed linen, and spent hours in the field behind our house capturing insects, taking them home in plastic tubes to identify. These summer outings were the highlight of my childhood, and in those early years, I would follow my father wherever he went.

It was my mother, however, who first introduced me to botany. On our walks she would patiently list the names of plants that I pointed out: red campion, cow parsley, greater stitchwort, meadow buttercup. I bought a notebook and began making lists of flowers. Obsessed with the Bee Orchid, I revisited Figsbury Ring every June, but despite my best efforts I never found it there again.

My family lived in a red-brick vicarage on the outskirts of Winterslow, a sprawling village on the Wiltshire–Hampshire border: a near-perfect environment for a boy who loved plants. In my spare time I roamed the countryside for hours. Equally fascinated by everyday buttercups and rare orchids, I became determined to see as many species as possible, and by the age of twelve I had extensively documented the flora of my local area.

But it wasn’t enough. I began making trips further afield to search for rarer species I had singled out from my wildflower guides. My parents seemed keen to encourage my interest, and at weekends, instead of ferrying me to sporting events, they took me around the countryside in search of these plants.

Not surprisingly, over time my hobby sometimes wore them down. In 2008, on a trip to the New Forest, my father and I went in search of the diminutive Bog Orchid. I had spent several weeks badgering him to take me, promising the trip would be a success. That afternoon I was committed to the hunt, squelching through the peat and recording the different sundews and bladderworts. More than once I fell into the bog, soaking my trousers. After five hours of searching we gave up, and returned disconsolately to the car, where we sat in stony silence. My father was annoyed at having wasted his day off; I was bitterly disappointed. Soon I became aware of the repulsive smell of wet peat seeping from my clothes. My father clearly noticed it too, his jaw muscles twitching as he wound down the window, and we were silent for the entire journey home.

To their enormous credit, my parents continued to humour me, despite a relatively low success rate and substantial petrol costs. Every time we went on holiday, I would insist on making diversions to look for orchids. What I promised would be a ten-minute drive inevitably ended up taking several hours, much to the annoyance of everyone else in the car. My sisters could not understand my parents’ indulgence. The three of us would be crammed into the back seat, me reciting the names of plants I saw from the window, while my sisters threw irritated looks in my direction.

As I grew up, my obsession with plants allowed me to bypass many of the trials of adolescence. Instead of facing the terrifying prospect of talking to girls my own age, I spent hours combing the fields and woods for plants. My friends teased me mercilessly; their jokes primarily revolved around me having lewd relationships with flowers.

Ironically, orchids have symbolised romance, sex and seduction throughout history. For centuries, they were believed to have aphrodisiac properties, helping to excite the sexual appetite of both men and women. In 1704, the French writer Louis Liger told the story of Orchis, son of the satyr Patellanus and the nymph Acolasia, who was sentenced to death for laying hands on a priestess at the festival of Bacchus. His father interceded for him and the gods turned him into the flower which still bears his name today. While this story is invariably attributed to Greek or Roman mythology, there is no mention of Orchis, Patellanus or Acolasia prior to the publication of Liger’s book, so he probably invented it. In fact, the orchid’s name is actually derived from the Greek word orkhis, meaning testicle, a reference to the shape of the tubers found in some species.

By the time I finished my GCSEs, I had seen perhaps a third of the fifty or so orchids in Britain. The remainder taunted me from the pages of my wildflower books. Some were completely new to me, while others had simply proven elusive on my excursions. But I knew I needed to see them all.

It was failing to secure a university place at Oxford eighteen months later that gave me the window I needed. As soon as I opened my rejection letter, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. That night I sat my parents down and pitched my gap year project to them. No botanist had ever found every species of orchid native to the British Isles in one season. I intended to be the first.

My parents are both vicars: they are stoic by nature, and little surprises them. And by then, of course, they were accustomed to my peculiarities. But on hearing my proposal they immediately raised a host of practical concerns: how would I fund the project, how would I get about, where would I stay?

From the outset they made it clear they wouldn’t be able to cover the costs. I’d worked casually as a gardener around the village for a few years, and with the money I’d saved had purchased an old Vauxhall people carrier – a good choice, as it turned out, as it would hold all of my gear and double as a motorhome if necessary. I would get a job, apply for grants and bursaries, and spend the winter saving and preparing.

Cautiously, they gave me their blessing.

Apart from my family and closest friends, I kept my gap year plans to myself. My school friends were all scattering: some were off to university, while others were planning hedonistic trips to Thailand, or were joining charitable schemes to build huts in Africa. I was not immune to derision, I knew my orchid obsession was a bit odd in their eyes and I was terrified of ridicule. So when people casually asked about my plans, I lied. A large part of my embarrassment was that I would be travelling around Britain; perhaps it wouldn’t have been so bad if I had been jetting off to South America to search for tropical orchids.

Orchidaceae is one of the largest families of flowering plants in the world, second only to the Daisies. There are approximately 25,000 identified species worldwide, a number that increases incrementally each year as more are discovered in the depths of the rainforest. Though individually finicky about their living conditions, orchids generally exhibit high levels of ecological diversity. Many are drought tolerant and have low nutrient requirements, giving them the ability to withstand extreme conditions. Some grow in arid, desert-like environments, in swamps or at the top of mountains, while a few can be found growing as semi-aquatic plants. Even within the Arctic Circle, long after trees and shrubs have deemed the environment too cold, there are orchid species that have made the icy tundra their home.

But even the more favourable environments are not necessarily easy to grow in. More than seventy percent of orchid species grow in the tropics: not on the ground, but on trees. There is barely any competition from ground-dwelling plants in the rainforest canopy, which has given orchids the opportunity to adapt and diversify. This is thought to be one of the reasons why they are so species-rich. Living in the treetops presents significant challenges though: there is very little water, they are exposed to intense UV radiation from the sun and subject to extreme temperatures. Many orchids have adapted to living under these conditions, defying stereotypes and constantly extending the boundaries of where plants can grow. Perhaps this is why they have become so popular.

For most people, the word orchid is synonymous with the exotic, showy specimens available in our supermarkets. Orchids signify wealth and mystery, something precious, rare and fragile from a far-away land. During the nineteenth century, Orchidelirium swept across Britain and Europe as wealthy collectors plundered the rainforests for tropical plants. As the British Empire expanded, opening up previously untouched areas, orchids were shipped back to the UK in their thousands. Plant hunters also brought information about habitats, making orchids easier to cultivate at home. By the turn of the century, hothouses across Europe were filled with vast tropical collections.

I, on the other hand, had no interest in the eye-catching tropical species. As I sat down to plot my quest at the age of eighteen, I needed a definitive list of orchids to find. Estimates of the number of orchids native to Britain and Ireland vary significantly, generally falling between fifty and sixty, meaning there was no obvious finishing line. Having consulted various books, I decided to draw my list from Orchids of Britain and Ireland by Anne and Simon Harrap, arguably the most comprehensive, up-to-date guide.

Though the Harraps name fifty-six species, some were problematic and would have to be excised from my list if I were to stand any chance of succeeding. Summer Lady’s-tresses, for example, is now considered extinct in Britain. The last reliable sighting of this species was in 1959 in the New Forest, after it fell victim to the effects of land drainage and over-enthusiastic plant collecting.

Migratory species were also troublesome. Orchid seeds are miniscule specks that can be carried vast distances on the wind before raining down on Britain. Very few species actually survive here though, as requirements for growth are typically highly specific. Those orchids that manage to establish themselves are often treated with suspicion by experts, given the unscrupulous practice of some botanists of introducing plants deliberately. It is difficult to prove natural occurrence, so I decided not to include continental species on my list. From the Harraps’ guide this meant leaving out the recent arrivals of Small-flowered Tongue Orchid in Cornwall and Greater Tongue Orchid in the Channel Islands.

The final and perhaps most controversial exclusion was the Ghost Orchid. Living up to its name, this little plant has always proven elusive in the UK, but recently we have come very close to losing it altogether. So close, in fact, that it has already been declared extinct once, only for it to be rediscovered in Herefordshire during the summer of 2009. There have been no confirmed sightings since, meaning the chances of me finding the Ghost were next to none. For this reason, I decided to leave it off my list.

And if I did manage to find one? It would be the most exciting day of my life.

This left me with a list of fifty-two species. Finding these orchids in one summer would be a superhuman endeavour. The orchid flowering season in Britain is roughly six months long, beginning in April and stretching through the summer to late September. Different species flower at different times, so my journey would be a squiggle across the map. I would have to go up and down the country, constantly retracing my steps. The length of the flowering period varies between species too. Most orchids flower for only a week, while some barely manage two or three days. Such is the precision of these flowering windows that in many cases I would have only one opportunity to find a particular species. And if I missed even one, my project would fail.

Timing would prove crucial, not least because the variability of British weather conditions would inevitably have an impact on flowering periods. I would need to be flexible and spontaneous, ready to abandon my carefully laid plans in an instant.

Over the course of that winter I waited and fretted. I got a job stacking shelves in Waitrose and spent my spare time applying for bursaries and grants, as well as reapplying to study biology at Oxford. Weather was a constant source of worry. If the winter was too warm, the orchids would flower early and I would be likely to miss them. If the weather was cold for too long, it could reduce the numbers that flowered. I needed advice from local experts to keep me informed on the progress of local populations, so I haunted the internet forums popular with botanists. And I would need to rely heavily on my car to reach far-flung corners of the country at short notice – an investment that had so far proved disastrous. After extensive repairs, the Vauxhall was still giving me trouble and spent more time in the garage than out.

Despite all this, I was excited beyond belief. As I stacked shelves with cartons of juice, I daydreamed of my orchid summer: of months spent exploring moors, copses, limestone escarpments and bogs, climbing mountains, visiting remote islands and scouring industrial estates. I didn’t know it then, but there would be heartbreak, loss and more than my fair share of technological disasters. If I succeeded, I felt I might finally satisfy my own obsession with orchids, but also understand the depth of our long-held national obsession with them: their ability to capture the hearts of so many, to drive people crazy, incite terrible crimes of passion and bring out our very best and worst.