The UK's rarest orchids

 The UK's rarest orchid is a species usually found in the southeastern Mediterranean. The lax-flowered tongue orchid, or Greek plowshare orchid, was found in 2021 and mistakenly believed to be a small-flowered tongue orchid until re-identified as Serapias bergonii. Given there there are no such plants anywhere west of Italy, it was assumed that someone just planted it there. However, the orchid grows on a private site in Suffolk, and its owners have repeatedly told me that nobody planted it there. Making it a genuine conundrum to see where this species could have originated from... and making it even more exciting. 

I decided to look for it on a cold, miserable and very windy day after my exams and promptly got myself lost in a maze of narrow roads near a bizarre-looking radio dish. It took me a while to find my way to the site from there, but after I arrived, I headed out to the area where I expected the orchid to be. I had seen it once before, in 2022, but in 2023 it had gone over by the time I visited. And, indeed, it was right there. 

There was just one Greek plowshare orchid growing in the meadow this year- the other was nowhere to be seen, possibly as a result of a massive explosion in the slug population this year, which had also wiped out most of the lady slipper orchids I visited at a certain site in Yorkshire not far back. I never had luck with that second orchid- in 2022, someone had stomped all over it by the time I visited. It is an orchid of an unusual colour, and very large- bigger than most greater tongue orchids I had seen in Essex in 2022 with the exception of a single plant in that famous clump. With the orchid residing in a rather remote location, it was difficult for me to see where it could have come from. 

Serapias bergonii dealt with, I headed north and after a highly unpleasant bike ride in the wind gusts soon arrived at another nature reserve, where I expected to see some platinum orchids, my name for Dactylorhiza incarnata ochroleuca, a spectacularly rare and critically endangered subspecies of early marsh orchid. There was no electric fence this year, and the population of platinum orchids at this Suffolk nature reserve had exploded. 

There were clumps of beautiful platinum orchids all over the place, and I was completely shocked to have counted 38 platinum orchids! That is more than there were in the last two years combined, and over twice as many as I counted last year. 

I briefly had a thought on whether I should explore nearby Knettishall Heath for heath spotted orchids, but ultimately gave up and headed back to where I started.