In my last post I was extolling the virtues of exploring the local plants before setting off to search the country after the rarities, and I cracked a poorly judged joke about not going to see even a Ghost Orchid unless it was growing in a crack in the pavement outside the flat. I must have thought I was on safe ground because no-one has seen a Ghost orchid in the UK since 2009. Then, suddenly today, an emailed newsletter from the BSBI announced that it had been seen once more at what will remain an undisclosed location. You’d think that rogue hunters would leave such a rarity alone but sadly not. Back in my home parish of Littleton, someone dug up a whole group of much more common orchids and spirited them away. Just for the record, orchids rely on a highly specific relationship with particular fungal networks and so digging them up is a lost cause. Anyway – lest I sound more pompous than I (hope I) really am, I’m not the trainspotter type and although I’m very happy that the discovery has been made, and even happier for the lucky finder who’s obviously put many search hours in; I’m quite satisfied with a photo.
I should also admit that I break my own rules all the time because we spend many weeks camping in Cornwall, West Wales, North and Central Wales as well as here in Bath and on Mendip. We’ve been going to all those places for so long that while we’re there they all feel like home and I’ve got long lists of plants for all of them.
Yesterday, to add even more unwanted texture to a difficult week, one of my teeth dropped out as a kind of tribute to National Health dentistry. I watch the news and read the papers and I detect a kind of Panglossian optimism in the air now we’ve got a Labour government. I’m afraid I don’t buy it.