Monday 20 June 2011

Walking in the Rain

Knowing my interest in wild orchids, a friend had booked us on an orchid-hunting walk on the Sussex Downs. Although I'd recently seen quite a few at Castle Hill Nature Reserve and hadn't thought about planning to see more quite so soon, I was drawn by the chance to discover more about the Downs; there was also an art installation, and I'd enjoyed Anish Kapoor's Sky Mirror, sited on a hill overlooking Brighton seafront, a couple of years ago.



The walk took us through one of the richest places for fauna and flora on the Downs, our guide, a National Trust warden, told us. He also mentioned that orchid theft still went on in the area, despite the fact that these plants are nearly impossible to grow on, and so this posting will be vague as to their whereabouts. Wild orchids only grow in the ultra stripped-down soil of chalk grassland. It took the National Trust about eight years to clear the area where we walked - cattle and, occasionally, sheep, were then brought in for grazing.


The atmosphere of secrecy, rarity and intensive preparation mean that catching sight of an especially beautiful wild orchid is like seeing a mythical creature. Above, a common spotted orchid (s0-named for the spots on its leaves) in a woodland area recently cleared and restored - click on the picture to see the delicate markings.


The subtle colours and dainty forms of some of the rarer flowers mean that they aren't easy to spot - we hunted high and low for a bee orchid but couldn't find one, though we found a spider orchid and a few tiny fly orchids.


Apart from the magnificent spotted orchid, highlights of our orchid hunt were this creamy white butterfly orchid, which is bioluminescent (glows after dark), and a fragrant orchid, a lovely light mauve, below (a blurry picture, taken in the rain). Our guide said that fragrant orchids tend only to release their scent towards nightfall and so most of my fellow walkers headed onwards. I stayed behind with a couple of others to admire it a little more, and then a lady knelt down and discovered that it really was fragrant, despite its being only midday. The scent was like honeysuckle.

By that time, the earlier shower had turned into a downpour - yet we followed our guide, who, minus hat and umbrella, seemed happily oblivious to the weather, up a hill in search of Bronze Age earthworks and man orchids. Not being hardcore naturalists like the rest of the group, we left when we'd reached the top, half-way through some intriguing information about the thousands of ant hills (the ants have a symbiotic relationship with the lovely adonis blue butterfly), and took the quickest route back, stopping for a half-pint before the drive home.


Not long after this walk, I was at Penshurst on one of the wettest days of the year - again, a trip booked in advance and so you just had to make the most of things. Yet it was still a pleasure to walk around the gardens - admittedly, it helps to have some Celtic blood - which have been transformed since my last visit a couple of years ago. Everything was thriving, no doubt thanks to the rain, after our drought.

The new herbaceous border was begun three years ago and is in the final stages of development - I made a mental note to return in July/August on a dry day. In the meantime, I went in search of the playful creations I'd seen before, the topiary bear (reached via the orchard) and heraldry garden.
There was a garden planted with symmetrical beds of white roses, which brought to mind an episode in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, in which the gardeners are painting a white rose-tree red (when Alice asks why, one of them replies: "this here ought to have been a red rose-tree, and we put a white one in by mistake").