The phantom orchid
Pursuit of Britain’s rarest bloom will lead you on some beautiful walks, even if you never lay eyes on its ghostly flower.
Pursuit of which makes lovely walks.
IT FIRST APPEARED on the bank of a Herefordshire brook in 1854, then vanished for more than two decades. In 1876 it popped up in Shropshire; 34 years later near Rosson-Wye; and in 1924 a schoolgirl saw it near Henley-on-Thames. A rash of sightings followed in the beautiful beechwoods of the Chiltern Hills, and then in 1987 it was gone again. For years people hunted for it in the shady forests, but in 2005 it was declared extinct in Britain.
The ghost orchid isn’t only elusive, it’s unusual. Epipogium aphyllum as it’s technically known, is ethereally pale and waxy. Botanist Peter Marren describes it like this: ‘The stem is a greasy tube the colour of dead skin. The few, nodding flowers have a deathly pallor.’
It’s a canny operator. Instead of having leaves to make food from photosynthesis it taps into a fungus, often of the inocybe genus which in turn has tapped into the roots of a beech, for all its nutritional needs. That means it can hide away underground for years at a time, just rarely pushing a flower up into the deep shadow under the beech canopy, where sunlight-needy plants can’t survive. Its potential blooming season runs from May to September, it’s most frisky after a wet spring and cold winter, and it’s not entirely finicky; it once flowered on a fly-tipped mattress.
And it’s still here. In 2009, a single bloom was found in the Welsh Borders and the plant’s status changed to critically endangered. And these phantoms might well emerge, sometime, to haunt
the Chilterns once more. The exact location of their flowering grounds is a closely held secret – all that’s publicly known is that it’s somewhere near Henley – but we’d happily explore the Chilterns’ beechwoods for hours looking for this extraordinary ghost.
WALK HERE: Download your free Stonor & Hambledon route guide, which starts at Henley at lfto.com/bonusroutes
MORE INFO: In normal times the Ghost Orchid Project welcomes volunteers to help monitor the woodlands where the elusive plant was last seen – find out more at ghostorchidproject.co.uk