When I started my career in conservation, the ‘Vacancy – warden required to guard rare orchid’ advertisement grabbed my attention. Yes, the job was to guard the only known population of the UK’s rarest orchids in Yorkshire: the lady’s slipper orchid. Yorkshire Wildlife Trust is now raising money to grow it and secure its survival.

Years later I found myself researching the lady’s slipper orchid at Durham Wildlife Trust, when I stumbled across an article describing this orchid in the Trust’s Hawthorn Dene Nature Reserve. With sadness I read that in 1926 the last of this stunning plant had been picked and given as a gift to a woman by her admirer. UK law now protects wild plants from being picked in this way, but this story is a stark reminder of the fragility of our natural heritage. 

Orchids are one of the most diverse groups of plants on the planet. Over 1,000 genera. More than 25,000 species. They are the largest and most highly evolved family of flowering plants.

There are around 57 native orchid species found in Britain (the number varying depending on your source). The number of species is fairly consistent depending on where you live in the country. Hampshire has 30 plus species, Kent and Sussex about 27-28 species each, the same number as the whole of Scotland! Wales has 32. My native Durham and Northumberland have 27 species. Some are common and others really quite rare. 

My children say, ‘You’re not allowed favourites!’ This rule applies to orchids and orchid sites as much as anything else in my life. I can’t place one above another, all are special. Allowances are made, with an annual pilgrimage to ‘check in on old friends’. Of orchids, some are work friends and we check how they are doing. A reward for past hard endeavours.

Like the early purple orchids that greeted me on a walk through an ancient semi-natural woodland on the Durham coast. In past years, Wildlife Trust volunteers removed non-native trees to allow light to reach the woodland floor to restore the ancient woodland native plant community. Imagine my pleasure on a hot May day as the cool shaded woodland trail led me to the exact spot. A small flush of early purple orchids bathed in sunlight, accompanied by a chorus of bird song and the trickle of the nearby stream.

This walk, I and many Wildlife Trust supporters and colleagues enjoy through spring and summer. Ten orchid species to spot, if you get your timing right.

Frog orchid (their flowers look like frogs, their hind legs jigging a dance!) rounds off the walk. Every year the same fear fills my head, ‘Where have they all gone?’, sense prevails, I remember I just need to look a little harder. Down on my hands and knees, I focus on a spot and like a magic-eye picture the hidden forest of frog orchids is revealed.

The Plant Atlas 2020 described this species as potentially the UK’s fastest declining orchid. The decline linked to agricultural improvement, undergrazing and more recently drought. Climate and weather are important. For the pyramidal orchid, the plant’s basal leaves appear in late autumn and die down the following summer. This growth strategy can leave this orchid vulnerable to climatic differences with hard cold winters leading to frost damage that jeopardises a plant’s success in the coming spring.

The county flower of the Isle of Wight, the pyramidal orchid prefers soils rich in calcium. Like those of the island, the majority of UK orchids prefer calcium-rich soils. Orchids can produce thousands of very tiny seeds, the greater butterfly orchid producing up to 25,000 seeds per capsule. The fact this sheer number of ultra light seed can be carried by the wind, ensures orchids are able to spread their progeny far and wide. Their success is determined by the environmental conditions they find. If we are to truly restore nature, orchids have many lessons they can teach us. Protecting 30 per cent of land for nature – a commitment made by our government – will mean, in time, some orchid species will find new areas suitable for their growth.

Watching nature reclaim its place in the landscape will be a privilege I thought we may not get to see. But there are examples where people have been doing just that for a number of years.

The dark-red helleborine orchid has been monitored for over 30 years at Bishop Middleham Quarry in County Durham. 2024 was a record year with 3,380 flowering spikes. Surveying at Bishop Middleham is a pleasant late summer’s evening event with longstanding friends and new enthusiasts.

Spare a thought for the orchid surveyors of The Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire & Northamptonshire. This intrepid group spend three days counting three orchid species, the man (the flower, a human body with an oddly oversized cycle helmet), musk (not smelling of musk, nationally scarce, declined by 70 per cent) and frog orchid… in late winter!

People travel far and wide to see orchids. So it’s nice to finish on a story about orchids that travelled to see people. Recently Essex Wildlife Trust got the opportunity to show off some of their orchids to the King and Queen at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. ‘Orchids in the Wild – The Beauty of Nature’ showcased the county’s native orchids and the Trust’s important conservation work. The orchids making the journey were common spotted, greenwinged, pyramidal and man orchids. I wish I could have seen the effect the VIPs (very important plants) had on the Royal visitors. 

Orchids highlight just what is at risk if we don’t address the causes of the nature emergency. Orchids have declined like other plants and species. Restoring habitats that support orchids will have benefits for a vast array of other species. Of my much-loved orchid walk the woodland holds three orchid species but is home to hundreds of other plants and animals not to mention fungi and micro-organisms. In the meadow, six orchids make their home amongst herbs and grasses, 44 different species in a metre square.

If you were to do just one thing in the coming spring and summer, make your own orchid story. If you were to do another, ensure the places we should find these special plants are restored and conserved. The more orchids the merrier.

Find an orchid haven near you and see these masters of mimicry for yourself.