Wild orchids

Primrose and the leaves of Early purple orchid

The lovely spotted leaves in the picture above belong to the Early purple orchid, whose flowers should be out in a few weeks’ time. I’ll try and get a picture of them for you.

All orchids are rare because they all have very specific and different requirements – for example, with respect to habitat, soil or pollinating insects, and because some of them flower only intermittently – ie, not every year. The Early purple is one of the less rare, but it is still uncommon.

It is illegal in this country to disturb any part of any wild orchid. In other words you can’t pick either leaves or flowers, or take seeds, or dig them up. Whether this protection extends to developing land on which orchids grow, I don’t know. I hope so. (It didn’t stop them driving the M25 through the North Downs however. This is where I grew up and where I first learnt about orchids, the Downs’ poor chalky soil being ideal for a variety of rare plants.)

I found these leaves in a small patch of woodland near home. The woodland has been left untouched because it is growing next to a stream in a valley far too steep to cultivate. When I wandered there on Friday, with the sun flickering through the bare branches and the tree trunks squeaking as the wind rubbed them against each other, I felt as if I was back in a fragment of ancient woodland, connected to the birth of the planet.

Ellie loved it too.

Ellie. (Picture by Rachel last summer.)

Lesser celandine

With a few days of sun (thank you, God), things are bursting into flower. Here's one of my favourite wildflowers, lesser celandine, which is suddenly all over the place.

Sorry for the chopped petal - I'm still learning about close-ups

The flowers only open when the sun is out*, and it takes its name from chelidon, the Greek for swallow. Goodness knows why since swallows (in my experience) arrive about April and celandines January–March.

My wildflower book says that it can be a troublesome weed but I love having it in the garden. It grows in the shade, provides good ground cover and makes way for later flowers with perfect grace.

A carpet of lesser celandine in the hedge. (Spot the dog.)

It’s a member of the buttercup family but not related to greater celandine (which is a poppy). I used to confuse it with winter aconite, another small yellow shade-growing early-spring flower but the leaves of the two are actually quite different. (Nor is winter aconite native.)

Winter aconite - which has what they call 'strap-like' leaves

 

Lesser celandine, with its adorable trowel-shaped leaves

* So the books say. I was out today (Sunday) in the rain and several celandine were open. I shall study the subject.

Stitchwort and wildflower conservation

I had resolved not to blog for a while so as to save my time and energy for novel-writing but I couldn’t resist posting this picture of the first stitchwort to appear this year. It was just the one and it looked so brave and hopeful standing on its own in the hedge.

I keep records of wildflowers because it interests me and because I think it might help when I’m writing about different times of year in my fiction. According to my records, stitchwort doesn’t usually appear until the beginning of March (although in 2012 it appeared on 1 January and in 2010 not until 10 April).

This means I suppose that the weather is warmer than usual (if there is a usual any more). One thing to be grateful for perhaps – and another, as my neighbour said this morning, ‘At least they’re getting it in the Thames Valley as well now’. (By which I don't mean that I don't care desperately about everyone who's flooded but that, the closer these things come to the powers that be, the more likely they are to help or to do something about them - if they can.)


The stitchwort above is ‘greater’ stitchwort. There’s also a ‘lesser’ stitchwort which produces mats of exquisite star-like flowers in the summer. (Perhaps that’s why their Latin name is Stellaria). The stitchworts are related to garden pinks and also to the wildflowers chickweed and campion.

A mat of lesser stitchwort in July 2011

As its name suggests, stitchwort was once used to cure muscular aches. It’s also said to be a cure for any misfortune that suddenly strikes one down. When I was researching my folklore books (see my old blog ‘Mad Englishwoman and Dog’) I came across a warning not to pick stitchwort because if you did you ran the risk of being ‘pixie-led’ – being deliberately led astray or confused by the West Country’s little people.

My advice would be not to pick any wildflower, ever. They need all the help we can give them, and I can’t understand why they have a lower profile in the conservation stakes than birds. To my mind they are just as entrancing (and they stay still so that you can get a good look at them) and equally essential to our health and happiness.

There is a wildflower charity called Plantlife to which I belong whenever I can afford it. In the meantime I simply try to spread the word.