The Orchid Outlaw: On a Mission to Save Britain's Rarest Flowers

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Frog, bird’s-nest, bee, fly, monkey, late spider, lizard — if you think these are ingredients for a potent Hallowe’en brew, think again: welcome to Britain’s fascinating array of wild orchids. Orchids are the most diverse, most highly evolved flowering plants on the planet. With more than 30,000 species (compared with 6,399 mammalian ones), the vast majority are native to tropical zones. It was these that wealthy Victorians feverishly imported at great cost from the jungles of Asia and the Americas. Ever since, tropical orchids have overshadowed Britain’s native flowers, to the extent that many people today simply do not realise that we play host to more than 50 species. Funder reveals how O’Shaughnessy Blair self-effacingly supported Orwell intellectually, emotionally, medically and financially ... why didn’t Orwell do the same for his wife in her equally serious time of need?’ My 40-year odyssey turning a field into a wildflower meadow that’s a buzzing, humming, fluttering world These adverts enable local businesses to get in front of their target audience – the local community.

The Orchid Outlaw by Ben Jacob - Jemima Pett Book Review | The Orchid Outlaw by Ben Jacob - Jemima Pett

The land at Cleeve Common has been left largely unchanged for centuries, and offers good opportunities for spotting orchids. (c) Getty Images David Gelber: Chancellors & Chancers - Austria Behind the Mask: Politics of a Nation since 1945 by Paul LendvaiToday managed by the National Trust, perched on the Cotswold escarpment, Minchinhampton Common’s grassland (once upon a time part of an Iron-Age Fort, a wooded landscape then partially quarried centuries ago) is a good place to look for Bee orchids rising from the grass like newly-polished velveteen gems. Each of these little jewels is a flower designed to look, feel, and even smell like a female bee sitting among pink petals to attract amorous males to mate with it. This process, known as “pseudocopulation”, is intended to get the flower pollinated without it having to produce nectar.

orchids in the Cotswolds | Great Precious and threatened: orchids in the Cotswolds | Great

Saving Britain’s orchids is about more than beauty in the wild; it is about protecting and preserving the rich tapestry of our natural heritage’ An area arguably unmatched for British flora, it boasts early purple, chalk fragrant, common twayblade, common spotted, northern marsh and early marsh, lesser and greater butterfly, and the scarce dark-red helleborine. Feoch Meadows, AyrshireAs did all our flora, orchids evolved to inhabit ecosystems specific to these isles, such as ancient beech forests, bogs, heaths, woodland clearings, marshes and meadows. Humans have made these habitats fragmented and rare. One species of orchid, summer lady’s-tresses, went extinct in Britain in the 1950s. Another, Irish lady’s-tresses, died out in the 1990s. The gorgeous lady’s slipper, with its sun-yellow pouch and burgundy braids, clings on in the wild as a single plant. Eileen M Hunt: Feminism vs Big Brother - Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life by Anna Funder; Julia by Sandra Newman Get political: write to your MP, make your views heard on social media, object to planning proposals on rare Cotswold grassland. Most of all, we can spread the word and encourage friends, family, and colleagues to do what needs to be done. As I explore in my book, The Orchid Outlaw, in this respect our native orchids matter: they are not only biodiversity indicators, they tell a story about the planet, our place in it, and how to save it. The story they reveal concerns us all.