Even more remarkable is the fact that although Bee orchids evolved this specialised method of pollination, in the absence of their pollinators they further adapted to be able to pollinate themselves. Several varieties of Bee can be found on Minchinhampton Common, alongside the lilac steeples of Chalk Fragrant-orchids with their strong, sweet perfume, and the green-flowered Frog orchid, which, in recent years, has become increasingly rare. Greater Butterfly orchids with flowers like pale green winged serpents also grow there. At night they emit a scent of lilies. In fact, no one had rescued them and no one was languishing in prison for their destruction. I took a closer look at the Act and discovered it excuses any “lawful operation or other activity” from razing tracts of rare habitat along with all that lives there. This is partly why, for decades, this Act has not really worked. This isn’t just about orchids – many populations of protected species and habitats have steadily declined since 1981. You might think this would indicate that changes in the law or how it is applied are long overdue. The flowers of the man orchid (Orchis anthropophora) resemble people with stumpy limbs and a hood. Credit: Linda Pitkin / naturepl.com Unfortunately, not all the chalk grassland that once clothed the Cotswolds has been saved. Today’s short-sighted planning policy allows rare habitats to be destroyed to make way for housing and transport infrastructure. By now you are probably working out that Ben Jacobs is covering a lot of ground in this book. Law, science, and simple botany, plus habitat niceties, policy of local government officers and other groundkeepers… and did I say simple botany? Orchids are anything but simple. They are the most amazing, most complicated flowering plants you can imagine, and it turns out they even have their own mycorrhizal fungi they like to cohabit with ( like trees).

orchids in Britain - Country Life Where to see wild orchids in Britain - Country Life

Ghost orchids (Epipogium aphyllum) have not been seen in the wild in Britain for 13 years. Credit: Alamy The enchantingly beautiful native orchid is, tragically, one of Britain’s most endangered wildflowers, but it’s still possible to see them if you look in the right places, says Ben Jacob, author of The Orchid Outlaw.

Get political: write to your MP, make your views heard on social media, object to planning proposals on rare Cotswold grassland. Most of all, we can spread the word and encourage friends, family, and colleagues to do what needs to be done. As I explore in my book, The Orchid Outlaw, in this respect our native orchids matter: they are not only biodiversity indicators, they tell a story about the planet, our place in it, and how to save it. The story they reveal concerns us all. The Law Commission reached the same conclusion in 2015 when it suggested an overhaul of our wildlife laws. The Home Secretary turned down the idea. What can you do when the government doesn’t (surprise, surprise) listen? You can sit at home grumbling. Or you can quietly step in to do what the law should. The irony is that while the Act excuses “lawful” operations from destroying threatened species, it doesn’t extend that kind of grace to an unauthorised individual digging up a plant. Frog, bird’s-nest, bee, fly, monkey, late spider, lizard — if you think these are ingredients for a potent Hallowe’en brew, think again: welcome to Britain’s fascinating array of wild orchids. Orchids are the most diverse, most highly evolved flowering plants on the planet. With more than 30,000 species (compared with 6,399 mammalian ones), the vast majority are native to tropical zones. It was these that wealthy Victorians feverishly imported at great cost from the jungles of Asia and the Americas. Ever since, tropical orchids have overshadowed Britain’s native flowers, to the extent that many people today simply do not realise that we play host to more than 50 species.

orchids turned me into an outlaw Rescuing doomed orchids turned me into an outlaw

Following the defeat of the Nazis in 1945, the idea took hold that Austria had been the first casualty of Hitler’s aggression when in 1938 it was incorporated into the Third Reich.’ Jacob tells us many times that he is ‘saving’ Britain’s native orchid population (which consists of fifty-one species, many endangered) at considerable personal risk. The problem is that orchids are fussy in terms of habitat and die out easily. Many have difficulty propagating themselves (even Darwin was flummoxed as to why). It means that species such as the rare Monkey Orchid, whose flowers really do look like little monkeys, and the rarest of all, the aptly named Ghost Orchid (last seen in Britain in 2009), find themselves nearing extinction in the wild. You can’t buy wild orchids from nurseries and their low-key charms are in any case somewhat recherché – ‘quirky, surprising, unconventional’, as Jacob puts it. The orchid has always been a These adverts enable local businesses to get in front of their target audience – the local community. This is a fascinating book, with a huge amount of information, and lots of references plus further reading. It’s properly put together and on the whole made for good reading. But it does tend to leap about a bit, and I think the editor could have done a better job to help Jacobs make it flow. Despite that, I gave it four stars on Goodreads, which means that the content far outweighs its faults. The endangered red helleborine (Cephalanthera rubra), one of Britain’s rarest plants. Credit: Getty

The land at Cleeve Common has been left largely unchanged for centuries, and offers good opportunities for spotting orchids. (c) Getty Images

The Orchid Outlaw: On a Mission to Save Britain’s Rarest

The spectacular lady orchid (Orchis purpurea), likened to ‘little women in burgundy skirts and bonnets’. Credit: Marianne Majerus Britain’s orchids are in decline — some are seeing a gradual slide towards extinction and others a recent population collapse. This is a consequence of a shift made about two centuries ago from millennia-old forms of land management to industrialisation. Over this period, clear-felling of ancient woodland, ploughing grasslands, draining marshes, urbanisation and the proliferation of chemicals in the earth, water and air have occurred on an unprecedented scale. Many of these factors have been enabled by feeble environmental legislation.

Saving Britain’s orchids is about more than beauty in the wild; it is about protecting and preserving the rich tapestry of our natural heritage’