Thriving in the Dales, plant that was picked almost to extinction
HE THOUGHT he was lending nature a hand – but with hindsight the reward offered by the Vicar of Arncliffe to anyone who could dig up a surviving example of Britain’s rarest wild flower and deliver it to his garden might not have been in its best interest.
As it was, within a few years the lady’s-slipper orchid was presumed extinct.
“They were so exotic and beautiful they were picked to the verge of extinction in the 1700s, sold on market stalls in Skipton and Settle and by 1900 had all but disappeared,” said Jamie Roberts, owner of Kilnsey Park Estate in the Dales, one of only two sites where a lady’s-slipper – so named because it is said to look like one – is publicly accessible, though not in this year’s flowering season.
“The coup de grâce was when the vicar put a reward on them,” Mr Roberts added.
The unfortunate Canon
William Shuffrey is thus remembered for horticultural dismemberment rather than his clerical achievements.
It was only from the chance discovery of one remaining lady’s-slipper, in a spot north of Skipton in 1930, that the species was spared.
Seedlings from it were reintroduced in the 1980s and there are now a few hundred examples – though the locations of most, including the parent, are undisclosed.
The one at Kilnsey Park is doing “fantastically well”, despite the recent dry spell, and proving hardier this year than the more common marsh orchid, Mr Roberts said.
Canon Shuffrey ought not to be blamed for the near-demise of the lady’s-slipper, he added.
“He thought that by planting some in his garden he could keep a population of them safe from harm. But as we now know, they don’t like to be moved.”