Tucked away among meadow grasses there it is possible to find some little yellow-green blooms growing off stalks only about ten centimetres tall.

PEW Literary | Author | Ben Jacob

In contrast, the lizard orchid has been said to smell of goat and can have yard-high banners smothered in twisted petals like lizards’ tails. I took a closer look at the Act and discovered it excuses any “lawful operation or other activity” from razing tracts of rare habitat along with all that lives there.

It is a cycle of growth and rebirth and the creation of new generations that these plants and their ancestors have engaged in for about 66 million years.

orchids in Britain - Country Life Where to see wild orchids in Britain - Country Life

The history of natural philosophers’ and alchemists’ interest in orchids goes back to mediaeval times. The Musk orchid, for example, is very prone to drought and last year’s record-breaking summer is likely to have decimated colonies, including those on Cleeve Common. The irony is that while the Act excuses “lawful” operations from destroying threatened species, it doesn’t extend that kind of grace to an unauthorised individual digging up a plant.As summer progresses, in select parts of the country, amid wild thyme, milkwort, kidney vetch and swaying meadow grasses, the air humming with choirs of bees and crickets, flickering with the wings of butterflies and day-flying moths, the full spectrum of Britain’s orchids bloom, enchantingly beautiful, as if forged by Fabergé. There is recreational pressure: scenic areas struggle to accommodate day-trippers, some of whom do not know just how rare the habitat around them is and how careful they need to be.

The Orchid Outlaw - Wainwright Prize The Orchid Outlaw - Wainwright Prize

An area arguably unmatched for British flora, it boasts early purple, chalk fragrant, common twayblade, common spotted, northern marsh and early marsh, lesser and greater butterfly, and the scarce dark-red helleborine.

Most of all, we can spread the word and encourage friends, family, and colleagues to do what needs to be done.

orchids in the Cotswolds | Great Precious and threatened: orchids in the Cotswolds | Great

One of Britain’s first-flowering varieties is the early purple orchid (Orchis mascula), found in ancient woodlands and meadows. Having long seen Britain’s orchids as pale imitations of their tropical cousins, he changed his mind completely and set out to find and photograph all fifty-one British species. Written about and drawn for centuries, with wild imaginings of what they do and can do if used for medicinal purposes.Today managed by the National Trust, perched on the Cotswold escarpment, Minchinhampton Common’s grassland (once upon a time part of an Iron-Age Fort, a wooded landscape then partially quarried centuries ago) is a good place to look for Bee orchids rising from the grass like newly-polished velveteen gems.