In deepest October not much of interest is happening on the wildflower meadows, so time for some out of season reminiscence. A hardy terrestrial U.K. orchid I have grown for a long time, not in the meadows but in large pots or containers, is the Marsh Helleborine. This is a very beautiful flower, and one I feel I may have slightly under-valued now that I don’t have it any more!
I bought a plant from a specialist nursery in 2008 which then thrived vegetatively, waxed and waned in number from year to year, and sometimes gave up to a dozen flower spikes. Finally, in this last year it failed to show. Fifteen years is a good run for an orchid plant, I think. Perhaps I could have kept it going with better attention, but I wonder if individual orchid plant stocks may eventually lose vigour over time and just fade away. Whether this is true or not, it will probably be much harder to find a legitimate supplier than it was back then.
E. palustris has a branching, horizontal rhizome just below the soil surface that “creeps” and forms many flowering stems if happy with the growing conditions. Thus although there are few wild UK sites it can be very abundant in them. In cultivation it grows robustly and can produce a large colony but is not really suited to most garden wildflower meadows, as it needs damp, alkaline conditions. These are usually either dune slacks or fens with alkaline ground water in the wild.
However, it would be a wonderful addition to a meadow if conditions were right. I have grown it in large containers of alkaline compost with a shallow water reservoir at the bottom to ensure the roots always have some moisture down below.It appears that, unlike our other U.K. Helleborines, palustris is not very dependent on a symbiotic soil fungus, at least in adult plants. Although seed germination presumably does need a specific fungus, the mature rhizome spreads vegetatively with ease, not only in the wild, but obligingly in various cultivation composts that have no special provision for fungus.
Though I grew the plant for many years beforehand, it nevertheless was a great thrill to see it in the wild for the first time. There was no substitute for seeing hundreds of flower spikes in a natural, grassy, wildflower bank in Sligo in Ireland.
Photos: 1. & 2. my Marsh Helleborine “in captivity”, 3. Marsh Helleborines in a wild meadow
Anthony.heys@sky.com
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