At this drab time of winter it’s nice to think back to the orchid highlights of last summer. In June I was very privileged to be invited to a Sussex garden with a miraculous flowering of Bee orchids (Ophrys apifera). In the long grass of a lawn-turned-meadow were literally hundreds of magnificent spikes, some with six, seven or more individual flowers. It was a really wonderful sight. No Bee orchids had been known to grow there before, and it is an area given to occasional river flooding. These two aspects reminded me about how mysterious the habits of this orchid are in terms of just when and where it will appear.
Unlike many of our other hardy orchids it is well documented to be unpredictable and highly adaptable. They are most often found on poor, alkaline soils in grassy nature reserves, but also in many other settings including heavy clay soils, sand dunes, roundabouts, railway cuttings, road verges, lawns, quarries and pits, brownfield sites, industrial rubble… the list goes on. I think a lot of us orchid nuts have our own Bee orchid “stories”. For me – I can remember seeing a dozen or so fine plants spring up for apparently no reason in the front garden of a North London care home that was undergoing building works. Also a single tall, many-flowered spike growing in complete shade by a woodland path on the North Downs.
Generally they are in well-drained locations but it is known to be able to thrive in areas temporarily flooded in winter. As a rule, being submerged for a while is not something that our orchids survive, even those that grow in fens and boggy areas. When growing them in pots one of the easiest ways to kill orchids is to let them stand in water. As Sherlock Holmes once said: “an exception disproves the rule”.
A very interesting property is that the Bee can suddenly colonise a completely new area, particularly if it is recently disturbed or dug up bare ground of low fertility. These are exciting displays to see but often they tend to last only a few years before dying out again. Conversely the populations in grassy nature reserves wax and wane a bit from year to year but tend to persist over the long term.
It’s reasonable to assume that the Bee orchid is enabled to germinate and grow by a specific soil fungus, eg from the Tulasnella genus, or by a group of fungi that it forms mycorrhizae with in all these different habitats. Maybe there are other soil factors that also need to be present as well as (or instead of) the fungi? Whatever the critical requirements are they must be fairly widely distributed and must become available in newly disturbed ground quickly. Orchid growers have sometimes been able to culture specific fungi that germinate Bee orchid seeds in vitro, but they tend to be rather delicate and soon lose their germinating powers.
Another advantage the Bee has for quick colonisation is that the flowers are almost all self-pollinated and therefore don’t rely on particular types of bee or any other insect to be resident. Many thousands of tiny seeds are released from each pod and can blow around anywhere on the wind.
It used to be thought that Bee orchids in the wild always died after their first flowering (monocarpism) but there is lots of evidence now showing this isn’t the case. Even from my own experience of having a few plants in pots I have seen that they mostly return for a few years. My impression, though, is that there may be a glimmer of truth in a plant “flowering itself to death”. The biggest plants that bear loads of individual flowers seem to often lose their energy next year and may only give rise to several very small non-flowering tubers or nothing at all.
Anyhow, there were so many wonderful plants at the Sussex garden that there surely will be another great display this coming June – let’s hope so, and for many years to come!
Photos above: 1. & 2. Bee orchids in Sussex garden, 3. Bee orchid leaves in winter, 4. a colour variety, probably O. apifera "chlorantha", growing on coastal shingle
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