New Orchid Species Found on 'Lost World' Volcano in the Azores

For years, there was only one formally recognized species of orchid on the Azores, a cluster of volcanic islands west of Portugal, though some claimed there were two species. However, a recent, three-year study to describe these Azorean flowers found that three species of orchids exist on the islands, including two that are newly recognized.

One of the new species was found atop a remote volcano and is arguably Europe's rarest orchid, said Richard Bateman, a botanist at Kew Royal Botanic Gardens in London. Researchers were surprised to find the new species atop the volcano, which had "a really 'Lost World' feel to it," he told LiveScience.

Continued

Rare red helleborine orchid blooms in Cotswold woodland

An "extremely rare and endangered" orchid which was once on the brink of extinction in the UK is blooming again in Gloucestershire.

Red helleborine, Cephalanthera rubra, is normally found in Europe where it is classed as "vulnerable" and only exists on three sites in southern England.

Seven years ago there were only three plants at the National Trust site in the Cotswolds.

Now, following conservation work there are some 30 plants at the location.

National Trust countryside ranger Tim Jenkins said although the species had been recorded in the beech woodlands site - which he asked the BBC not to identify - for some 70 years, it was only in recent years that the number of plants had increased and they were starting to flower regularly.

He said little was known about the precise habitat and growing conditions so conservation work was going on at the site in an attempt to optimise the surroundings to allow the orchid to flourish

"We don't fully understand how the plant reproduces here as the particular bee that normally pollinates it [in Europe] is not found in the UK.

"We've tried manually pollinating the orchid and even taking cuttings but we've not had any luck yet but we are sharing our knowledge with experts at Kew Gardens and Natural England.

Continued:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-18678758

Council mows rare orchids - again

11 June 2010, 9:07

A council has admitted accidentally mowing down one of Britain's rarest orchids - for the third year running.

Hampshire County Council has again mowed a grass verge containing endangered narrow-leaved helleborines.

The mistake has astonished and angered conservationists and wildlife enthusiasts who fear the orchids may never recover at the site.

Narrow-leaved helleborines are officially classed as one of the world's most vulnerable flowers, reports the Daily Mail.

For more than 50 years, the orchids have grown on a road verge at Mascoombe Bottom in the Meon Valley, Hampshire.

But three years ago Hampshire County Council changed its roadside mowing routine and cut down the flowers before they could seed.

The charity Plantlife contacted the council and was given a guarantee the mistake would not happen again. But it was repeated last year and again this year.

Dominic Price, Plantlife's species recovery officer, said: "When I found out last week that for the third year running the few remaining orchids had been cut before they could flower I was absolutely speechless.

"This is nothing short of a massacre of one of the UK's rarest species."

Coun Mel Kendal, executive member for environment, said he would be ensuring all verges of ecological importance were individually assessed to protect rare species in future.

http://web.orange.co.uk/article/quirkies/Council_mows_rare_orchids_again

'EXTINCT' GHOST ORCHID APPEARS FROM THE GRAVE (via Paul Cropper)

'EXTINCT' GHOST ORCHID APPEARS FROM THE GRAVE
440 words
24 April 2010
The Press (Christchurch)
9
English
© 2010 Fairfax New Zealand Limited. All Rights Reserved.

It is the most mysterious wildflower in Britain, the strangest, the rarest, the hardest to see, and it was given up for lost. But like a wandering phantom, the ghost orchid has reappeared. The Independent newspaper reports that after an absence of 23 years, during which it was declared extinct, this pale, diminutive flower, the most enigmatic of all Britain's wild plants, rematerialised last autumn in an oak wood in Herefordshire.

Its sighting, initially kept a close secret, has electrified the British botanical community. This is British botany's holy grail, searched for annually and ardently by a small army of enthusiasts for more than two decades.
Its eventual rediscovery was due to the painstaking detective work of an amateur botanist, Mark Jannink, who identified 10 possible sites in the Welsh borders and visited them regularly throughout the summer, until on September 20 he found a single example of Epigogium aphyllum, bearing a single white flower on a white stem only five centimetres tall.

The plant was so unobtrusive that it was invisible from a few yards away.

There had been no previous ghost orchid sighting in Britain since a single plant was found in Buckinghamshire in 1986. It was declared extinct in Britain's Red Data List in 2005. Mr Jannink, 42, who runs a motorbike company in Worcestershire, has been a wildflower enthusiast since childhood. "To be honest, I was ready to give up, and the feeling when I saw it was of relief more than anything. It was the following day I felt the euphoria," he said.
The species is hard to find because it does not appear every year and behaves more like a fungus than a flower, according to naturalist Peter Marren author of Britain's Rare Flowers: "It has no green leaves. It doesn't depend on photosynthesis at all, and it doesn't manufacture its own food. Instead, the food is manufactured for it by a fungus on its roots. It lives largely underground; in fact it can live underground without flowering properly for years on end, and it only flowers when conditions are just right."

Mr Marren added that when it does bloom, the ghost orchid flowers in the thick leaf-mould in the darkest parts of the woodland, where there is no other vegetation. "It's the hardest British flower to see. It looks extraordinary. It produces these flowers without chlorophyll which in the dim light look like ghosts, and if you shine a torch beam on them they appear to be translucent white in the pitch darkness, almost like a photographic negative."