Jewels in the Grass

I sometimes leave my garden. Not often, mind, but there's something wonderful about wandering through a wood or bimbling along a beach.

And there is so much that 'wild' habitats can teach you about your own little bit of habitat back home.

So, last Sunday, I decided a yomp was in order. Or at least, it was part yomp, part jewel hunt, because on a downland nature reserve near me there are some very special orchids. They are called the Early Spider Orchid, and right now is about the peak of their flowering season.

But, boy, do they take some finding. The flowers are about the size of your little finger nail, on a stem little more than four inches high, and in the short, grazed turf, they are the kind of thing you could stand on and never know it.

See if you can find the Early Spider Orchid in this photo. (Go to the end of the blog for the answer!)

You have to get right down on your knees to appreciate their subtle, curious beauty.

As you can see in these two examples, the shape of the pale marking on the bulbous, slightly furry lip of the flower is variable, the upper one forming almost an 'H' shape, the lower more like a Greek 'pi'. The flower has evolved to be pollinated by the Buffish Mining Bee Andrena nigroaena, in which the male bees mistake the gingery, furry lip of the orchid for a female bee.

Early Spider Orchids are rather short-lived, and don't reproduce vegetatively (they don't make runners or spread via their roots) so their survival relies on producing seed. It seems such a precarious existence, that relies on so many factors all being present and correct - short, grazed, unfertilised downland turf, where they aren't outcompeted by vigorous grasses and where their pollinating bees also survive.

Now gardens are never going to be play a role in the survival of the Early Spider Orchid, but that doesn't mean that you can't have jewels of your own. And in my own mini meadow, which was sown five years ago on what was previously a chicken pen and currently looks like this...

...it looks like I am at last going to find my own jewels this year. Hidden in my turf, kept short by the copious amounts of Yellow Rattle that keep the grass in check, are the first leopard-spotted leaf rosettes of the Common Spotted Orchid.

It may not be quite as scintillatingly rare as the Early Spider Orchid, but wild orchids in gardens are a real possibility for us all. How exciting is that?!