Monkey Orchid Orchis simia, Lady Orchid Orchis purpurea, and possible Monkey x Lady hybrid
Oxfordshire, UK. 30 May 2006

Today the rain finally stopped long enough for Peter Mowday (long-time friend) and I to catch up with a few of the UK’s orchid species - which for years now we’ve been promising ourselves to do.

We drove down to the wonderful - and absolutely tiny - Hartslock Nature Reserve owned by the Berks, Bucks and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust. Hartslock NR is not much bigger than a handkerchief but (to quote the BBOWT website) is “a jewel of a nature reserve on a steep chalk hillside in south Oxon with wonderful views of the River Thames”. For once a sentence on a website is absolutely free of hyperbole (oh, the irony, groans the author) - it is a jewel of a reserve, and the views to the River Thames as it winds through chalk downland are absolutely wonderful. Full marks to the local Widlife Trusts up and down the UK who work so hard to buy these patches of land - Britain would be all the poorer without them (so join one…).

Anyway, as much as I like the downland here it’s too far to drive just to admire the views: the big draw at Hartslock is a small colony of the very rare Monkey Orchid Orchis simia, which grows in just a handful of sites in southern England (it’s widespread throughout southern and western Europe, the Mediterranean and North Africa). According to the warden, 2006 “has been a great year for Monkey orchid plant numbers and spread of plants too. Not only have we exceeded the previous records and have 405 plants above ground; we have also seen a marked increase in the number of plants growing outside the main colony in the first and last fields.” Great news! The flowers of the Monkey Orchid apparently resemble little pale pink monkeys with curled ‘arms and legs’ and a stumpy ‘tail’: I don’t really see it myself - more like Lowry “matchstick men” if old ‘L.S.’ had been on the magic mushrooms - but then I’m not big on imagination when it comes to flowers…perhaps I should post a couple of images and let you decide for yourselves…

Monkey Orchid Orchis simia

A second orchid found here is the Lady Orchid Orchis purpurea (many of the orchids found in the UK, incidentally, have these slightly fanciful single word specific names - eg Frog, Ghost, Man, Burnt, Lizard, Fly, and Bee, as well as Monkey and Lady), another rare orchid and a species normally found in mid-June further east in the UK in woodlands in Kent. The thought behind the name here apparently is that the flower and ‘lip’ resemble a lady wearing a bonnet and petticoat (you know, I can’t help but think that the Victorians who first named these orchids must have had some great evenings sitting round with magnifying-glasses and glasses of Port, debating in fits of giggles what to call the new plants they’ve just dug up)…anyway, here’s a couple of photos of the “ladies”…

Lady Orchid Orchis purpurea

Several tall spikes have grown at Hartslock that are being described as either Military Orchid Orchis militaris - which earns its name because (again ‘apparently’) the pink to purplish flowers look like small soldiers with ash coloured ‘helmets’ and distinct ‘arms’ and ‘legs’, spotted with red ‘tunic buttons’ - or a hybrid between Monkey and Lady Orchids. Given that the two latter flowers are growing within a few feet of each other and have hybridised before, my money is on the hybrid theory [Charlie: which later proved to be correct].

Probable hybrids between Monkey and Lady Orchids

The two other orchids we saw here? Neither are very scarce, and as one wasn’t yet flowering properly (White Helleborine Cephalanthera damasonium) and the other looks like a green stalk with some small green flowers hanging off it I don’t suppose they get half the attenttion that the rarer orchids do. Nevertheless I have to say that the “green one” - better known as the Common Twayblade Listera ovata - was actually my favourite of the four. It’s far less ostentatious, far more dicrete, quietly growing up from the long grass while the orchid listers hurry past on their way to the jiggling Monkeys - much more “my type” if the truth be told…

Common Twayblade (left) and White Helleborine

If you do go this site PLEASE bear in mind the following exhortation posted on a thread at BirdForum by the Reserve manager: “Just to remind visitors that trampling is actually the greatest threat to the plants at the moment. We encourage people to try to stick to the marked routes and to watch their feet *very* carefully and to look out for the white tags that mark each plant. Approach the slope from the bottom so that it is easier to see both plants and tags and when you see a nice plant don’t just walk towards it - pick your way carefully, avoiding the vegetative and seedling plants as much as possible. Thanks.”

The other threat? Idiots with trowels: I did think about whether to post the name of the site or not, but it is a very well-known colony and news of the possible hybrids is pretty widespread now anyway (we went knowing that they were there). I would say though that if you happen to go to see them and see someone carrying a bucket with a few orchid spikes sticking out then get on your mobile and call the police at once - these plants are fully-protected under law and look at their best on a chalk slope, not fading away in a private greenhouse somewhere…