|
I'm not sure what happened to the text of my
posting, it didn't show up in item No 2, issue 320, so I'll repeat it as I
wanted to share this:
Viateur said, in mid June, "Feel free to
comment" "I suspect that some subscribers to this list might not agree
with the "disturbance and suitable grazing" theory. I would have commented earlier, but have been out of town for
a week and have just cleared a backlog of emails (mostly ODG).
As a child I used to roam the countryside of
South-West England with a basic Field Guide of Wild Flowers (only black &
white sketches and text) at each place to where my family had
moved.
In 1982 I made my first return trip to England and,
being an orchid grower, included a visit to a certain country road in
Dorset. Stopping the car at a certain point, I walked over to the wide
grass verge (still there, the road had not been widened) and quickly
found orchid plants. Within an area of about 12ft X 3 ft
or about 4m X 1m, were about 10 clumps of orchid plants. I have not noted
whether they were too early or too late for flowering. (30 years earlier I had identified the plants as the Early
Purple Orchid when, at a guess, the colony may have been half the
size.) I checked up and down the road for some distance on both
sides, but there were no other orchid plants at all.
I had not expected the colony to have survived,
through disturbance or destruction of habitat. Although it is a
common orchid, and I have since seen it through Devon, it was still a
thrill to find the same Dorset colony again.
Jean from New
Zealand |
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