Orchids

Orchids are beautiful creations – you don’t need me to tell you that – but can be surprisingly easy to overlook. I visited New Buckenham Common recently with a friend to have a look at the green-winged orchids that grow there in abundance, a good show this year. I would like to share with you a piece I wrote last year for Norfolk Wildlife Trust on the subject of orchids, relating a visit to that very same place. It is a lovely, tranquil spot well worthy of a visit should you be passing.

It was a wet morning, torrential rain hammering down from leaden clouds scudding across a May sky, whipped ever onwards by a fresh westerly breeze. Returning to our cars we contemplated our next move. ‘It does look brighter over there’ quipped one optimistic soul and we all looked and convinced ourselves that this was so. An early lunch then, followed by a walk across the common….if the promise of brighter weather bore fruit.

And luckily it did allowing us to amble across Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s well managed New Buckenham Common in a window of brightness surrounded by a dark frame of gloom. Here we celebrated the wealth of wild flowers on show; stands of cowslips, red campion, greater stitchwort and meadow saxifrage. Vetch, trefoil and clover. A lesser whitethroat clattered its song from a stand of hawthorn, common whitethroats, blackcaps and a songthrush produced a musical serenade, whilst orange tip and peacock butterflies went in search of nectar or a mate.

But our real purpose here was to seek out a special plant, a plant dependent upon this habitat being cared for and more importantly undisturbed by ploughing, over grazing, or being smothered in chemicals. In short a plant that loves to be left alone; the green-winged orchid. This common, like many others around the county contains a variety of micro habitats: higher, drier areas good for many wildflowers; sunken pits where ponds, some temporary, are formed; stands of native scrub where May blossom gives off its heady sweet fragrance; open bare ground beloved by basking butterflies, ants and beetles and some marginal tall grassland, meadow like and full of life. It doesn’t happen by accident; it never did. In past times the rights of Commoners to graze livestock, collect fallen or easily accessible timber (hence the saying ‘by hook or by crook’), cut turfs or dig for marl or sand created these differing habitats, a mosaic rich in wildlife and cared for by the people whose very livelihood depended upon such areas existing. Nowadays commons have to be looked after by conservation bodies and local councils without whom they would quickly scrub over and be lost.

We headed for a likely looking area of short grass on relatively dry ground and were soon rewarded with the sight of a few orchids. We counted a dozen flowing spikes but then saw a few more, then another cluster and more still until we were amidst hundreds of delicate purple blooms. Crouching down and getting close we could see how the orchid got its name; the green veins on the hood of the flower giving an impression of a coloured ‘wing’. Such a beautiful plant and well worth an earlier soaking.    

There are over twenty orchid species occurring in Norfolk. Some are widespread and common, others are very rare; all are very selective in where they choose to live, take several years to flower, can be unpredictable in their appearance and need unpolluted, well managed habitat to survive. Their seeds are very small and do not have large reserves of food so they need help in the form of minute fungi to assist germination. That said there are certain areas that come up trumps every season, the aforementioned NWT New Buckenham Common being one such site.

Celebrate orchids and all wild things. Cherish our commons and wild spaces. Help to maintain them by joining your local wildlife trust or by taking part in our surveys. Above all just enjoy the free splendour that nature puts on show.