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Spotted, Pyramidal and Bee Orchids
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We moved home several times during my husband’s career. Arriving at each new home we took note of the maxim that it is best to live with a garden for a year before making changes; that way new surprise plants make their appearance.
We have lived in our current home for 27 years, but it was 15 years before we found our most cherished wildflowers!
Like the previous owners, we regularly mowed the grass. Then we decided, for environmental reasons and to reduce the mowing effort, that we would allow most to become meadow grass with a network of paths mown through. That year we found one example of each of the wild orchids in the photographs. In the intervening years, the numbers have increased. Each June it is our joy to search for orchids. The one which promotes most awe and wonder in me, is the Bee Orchid. It is one of nature’s best mimics; to a male bee, the flower’s velvety lip looks, feels, and smells like a female bee. Males try to mate with it, thus pollinating the flower.
Although bee orchids reflect the image of a bee, each individual flower is unique. In a deeper sense, we ourselves and the children we teach, are made in the image of God and yet unique and special in his sight.
One of the rewarding aspects of living in the same diocese for 27 years is that through chance meetings with parents of former pupils, I discover what young people do with their lives after school. It is such a privilege to glimpse how seeds sown and nurtured in school come into blossom. As with plants in a garden, future careers are sometimes predictable and at other times totally unexpected, yet all valued.
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‘ And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these..'
Matthew 6:28-29 ESV
“In the hopes of reaching the moon, we fail to see the flowers that blossom at our feet.”
Albert Schweitzer
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A former pupil at one of our Diocesan Schools was Leif Bersweden whose love affair with orchids began at Figsbury Ring when he was just seven years old. He found a Bee Orchid, and that inspired in him a lifelong passion. He applied to Sarum St Michael Educational Charity for a grant towards his gap year during which he would search for each of the 52 native species of orchids in the British Isles. His first book, “The Orchid Hunter”, tells the story of that search. Reading this book has really enhanced my interest in wild orchids. Leif is now a PhD student researching “Species Integrity and Gene Flow in Anthropomorphic Orchis Species” – now there’s an interesting career choice! To learn more about Leif and his work, see his website here.
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