"Two endangered orchids... in a nature reserve near Goring. The monkey orchid and the lady orchid... at the Hartslock Nature Reserve... produced an... hybrid. ... The reserve is owned by the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust (BBOWT) and the hybrid was first spotted there by volunteer reserve warden Chris Raper.
... Raper had been monitoring a clump of 20 seedlings for three or four years waiting for them to flower. He described the moment of discovery... : "To my surprise when the first flower opened on a wet April morning, I saw it had the purple curly 'legs' of a monkey orchid, not the pink 'crinoline dress' of a lady orchid. I immediately thought hybrid." To confirm the find... Richard Bateman of the Natural History Museum and... Mike Fay of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew were called in. ... Bateman said: "Closely related orchid species readily interbreed. In addition it is usually possible to identify which species is the 'mother' and which the 'father' as the offspring bears a much stronger physical resemblance to the mother. "In this case, it would appear, appropriately, that the lady orchid is the mother." ... Raper is not concerned that the presence of a vigorous hybrid on the reserve might be a threat to the "genetic integrity" of the parent species. His theory is that in the distant past, the three species probably grew all along the South Chilterns. He said: "Far from being a problem, the new hybrids might actually be returning the population to a more natural state where occasional mixing of genes between the species was normal." ... Raper is protective of the site and... he warned: "I know that most visitors think they are being careful and would never knowingly damage a plant, but it still happens far too often. "When people get excited, they just concentrate on the flowers they have come to see and don't notice how many plants they are treading on." He said he often found broken "tags" marking the site of orchids trodden on by mistake. For this reason BBOWT has been careful not to advertise the presence of the orchids while they were in flower earlier this year. ... Raper wrote... : "... we just... don't want to encourage hundreds of extra visitors in this the first year they have appeared." Martyn Lane of BBOWT said of the chalk grassland Site of Special Scientific Interest at Hartslock: "The monkey orchid has always been on this site as far as we know. It's only found in two native sites in England. The lady orchid became established here for the first time in 1998, although we do not know for sure whether it occurred naturally." The monkey orchid (Orchis simia) so called because of its monkey-like flower has increased from 60 plants in 1986 to 4,005 in 2006 at Hartslock. The lady orchid (Orchis purpurea) is quite common in Kent but extremely rare elsewhere." Article URL: http://www.getreading.co.uk/news/2003/2003005/frisky_orchids_breed_a_first ********** regards, VB _______________________________________________ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) [email protected] http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
