The month of June brings out the flashmob of the meadows, one filled with colour, character and comic potential. Orchid enthusiasts know dependable spots where they can find other members of the family in this county – woodland rides for common spotted, the disused railway cutting for pyramidal, southern downland for twayblades. But the true wildcard is the bee orchid.
One year’s display will be next year’s absence. Though they are perennial, in three decades here I’ve never known a flush of bee orchids to appear in the same place two years running. Chance and a favourable wind bears their seed to ground, where they bed down with a cooperative fungus, and there they thrive – and then vanish.
Litter-picking on a mown grass strip separating factories that make scaffolding and silica gel, I stumble on the floral surprise of the summer. On the interface between wheat and asphalt, the perimeter of an industrial estate, I have discovered the biggest, best stand of bee orchids in my life, and I am whooping with joy. I give up counting at 200 flower spikes, nudge a discarded pizza carton out of the way and prostrate myself for a scented sniff and a proper eyeful.
Orchids are famously perverse. Those brazen sugar-pink petals waving right, left and above are actually the sepals – green and leaf-like structures under normal plant rules. Two of the three petals might be furry shrew heads, while the central third is bloated into what some consider a bee shape. For me, it has more the look of a hippopotamus or a deflating sausage. My overall impression of the flower, though, is of a grinning cartoon frog with lime‑green deely boppers on its head, a blue and yellow bib, a rich brown generous belly, and stumpy, hairy, welcoming arms.
The final absurdity is two dangling yellow threads before its “eyes”, like a pair of fluffy dice over the dashboard. Most of the UK’s bee orchids self-pollinate, for there are not enough male bees to practise pseudo-copulation on a fake female. When the ripe pair of sticky pollinia touch, the job is done. Who needs sex anyway?
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