The mysterious Ghost Orchid blooms in near darkness among rotting leaves on the forest floor. It blends into the background to the point of invisibility, yet glows, pale and ghostly. The ultimate grail of flower hunters, it has been spotted only once in the past twenty-five years. Its few flowers have a deathly pallor and are said to smell of over-ripe bananas.
Peter Marren has been a devoted flower finder all his life. While the Ghost Orchid offers the toughest challenge of any wild plant, there were fifty more British species he had yet to see. Among them was Diapensia, an alpine confined to a single steep Highland ridge; and the Holly-leaved Naiad, which inconveniently grows only in deep water. Peter set himself the goal of finding them all in a single summer. As it turned out, the wettest summer in years.
The quest took him from the dripping ancient woods of the New Forest to the storm-lashed cliffs of Sutherland. He paddled and swam in lakes, clambered up cliffs in mist and rain, and walked several hundred miles. It turned into another kind of journey: one into the heart of field botany in Britain – the dedication of plant recorders, and the never-ending enquiry into why plants grow where they do.
Partly about plants, partly autobiography, Chasing the Ghost is also a reminder that to engage with wild flowers, all we need to do is look around us and enjoy what we see.