Today was the most physically exhausting and most exciting orchid trip that I have ever had. Today I had fulfilled a long-standing dream of mine, visit the Norfolk Broads for another incredibly rare orchid, the fen orchid. With a population of a few thousand of them in the UK, the orchid isn't as rare as the other ones I've been chasing, but is no less exciting. It is still listed as endangered, and is still very rare and extremely difficult to find, particularly in the Norfolk Broads. I visited a well-known site for this orchid. However, finding this orchid would be very, very difficult here.
After exhausting myself searching for it for half an hour on some pretty unstable ground which moved and bounced under me, I was no closer to finding the orchid than I had been at the start. As if to console me, I found a few marsh helleborines, some of which had started flowering, including a small colony of these stunningly beautiful flowers, perhaps the most attractive out of the UK orchids.
This was my first time encountering an Epipactis helleborine.
I found quite a few of these over the next hour of searching. However, no fen orchid was to be seen. Eventually I reached a point where I had searched all accessible paths for them. No fen orchids. One and a half hour in, I had no found the orchid I wanted to see so much. I knew it was small and blended in, but I never expected to be bogged down like this. A cuckoo called in the distance- in mid-June.
So, I made a decision to revisit some of the paths I had been scouring. I was convinced I had just walked past it. But, despite checking very, very hard, I was not able to find them along a promising path that ran by a small river winding its way through the swamp. I was convinced they would be there. Now having spent more than two hours on foot without respite, looking for a single orchid, I returned to another place I was suspicious of.
Searching through the moss and reeds, I found a few more marsh helleborines. I hoped to also see some marsh fragrant-orchids, but none were to be seen at all. And that is when I saw it.
It was even smaller than I thought it was. I know that most pictures show its interesting, pretty flowers as pure green, but the flowers I found had visible pale yellow flowers.
Against incredible odds, I had done it and tracked down an orchid that was nearly impossible to find, the orchid which loved hiding in dense vegetation and clustering into reeds. The very rare, and beautiful, may I add, fen orchid. It looked like the flower was going over as well, with only the top covered by its creamy yellow flowers. I looked at the places where I had spent part of the two and a half hours searching for it, which were nearby, and shook my head. I then found another fen orchid nearby, and then an entire clump of three growing together!
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