It's time for indoor botany. I am preparing a little presentation for my village garden society on Britain's wild orchids and in doing so natural questions pop up such as 'how common / rare are they' and 'where do you find them'. Reading newspaper headlines it the phrase is always 'rare orchid'.
I have been a member of BSBI for at least 25 years. I have been on a few field trips, which are mainly plant recording events, but because my identification skills for anything other than orchids, gentians and saxifrages, are very limited my contributions are little better than nothing. So why remain a member? Well there are benefits and a significant one is access to the database derived in part ironically from those recording trips. It is terrific, and it was to this database I turned so that I could work out how common or otherwise orchids actually are. I analysed records for this century for all the orchid species by vice county. These vice counties have I think been unchanged since 1852 in Britain when they were introduced by Watson, (Praeger introduced the same concept for Ireland in 1901) unlike the administrative county boundaries, which change with every passing whim of politicians.
There have been taxonomic changes this century. I eliminated records for Dactylorhiza majalis, which is now mostly reclassified in the most part to D. kerryensis, an Irish species, and the fragrant orchid aggregate, Gymnadenia conopsea s.l (sensu lato = in the broadest sense) was split in the early 2000's into 3 species, formerly recognised as sub-species, (Heath fragrant, G. borealis; Marsh fragrant, G. densiflora; Chalk fragrant, G. conopsea s.s (sensu stricto = in the narrowest sense))
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| Heath Fragrant Orchid |
The results were surprising. The database gives no hint as to plant abundance, and therefore one record on one day in one place is equivalent to 1000's in lots of places every year, so there are limitations. Nevertheless it is the best we have, and the results were surprising. The commonest orchid (i.e. the most widespread) was Common spotted orchid (Dactylorhiza fuchsii) which occurred in 152 of the 153 vice counties in Britain and Ireland. Three other orchids, Common twayblade (Neottia ovata), Early purple (Orchis mascula) and Heath spotted (Dactylorhiza maculata) were not far behind and occurred in 150, 149 and 148 vice counties respectively. By contrast 4 orchids were only found in one vice county; Ghost orchid (epipogium aphyllum) made its only appearance this century in 2009, and the Hebridean marsh orchid (Dactylorhiza evudensis) is not now recognized as a separate species and should not really be included. (I saw it this year on North Uist in the sand dunes there.)
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| Common Spotted Orchid, Eades Meadow, Worcs |
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| Common Twayblade, Cornbury, Oxfordshire |
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| Early Purple Orchid, The Burren, Ireland |
The most orchid-rich vice county was Westmorland, where I was born and raised. The administrative county disappeared years ago and is now remembered only as a service station on the M6, and this vice county name. It has 31 species, and seems to be a cross over point between northern and southern species, amplified by the upland there. My present home, the Oxfordshire vice county, comes third with 29 species. Two small Scottish vice counties have only 6 species. The 3 pictures below were of plants at Helsington near Kendal.
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| Dark-red Helleborine, Helsington |
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| Fly Orchid, Helsington |
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| Fly Orchid, Helsington |
But wherever you live in Britain and Ireland you are never far from an orchid of one sort or another
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