Williamson's Weekly Nature Notes

The white flower is a greater butterfly orchid and grows on the edges of woodland here and there in Sussex, on or near the chalk.

It is one of the most feminine looking flowers of all: the sort of white innocence that would have got all the Victorian artists aglow with passion suppressed by honeur aux dames for such a display of fragrant and transcendental beauty.

There they all await you, these damsels with their white arms wide for imminent embrace, their pale but perfectly complexioned faces capped by demure bonnets, yet their lower bodies thrust forward for sweet union; a kind of corps de ballet from Swan Lake.

Most enchanting.

There are half a dozen of these Platanthera chlorantha that grow near my home each year and it is one of the moments of spring when the two big oval leaves first appear out of the mass of Good Friday grass, violets, dog's mercury and bugle as they prepare their place in the sun for the weeks ahead.

Then up goes the stem with all those milky green buds beginning to bulge inside their developing inflorescences, until one day you go for a walk in the early dawn sunshine which warms that little bank of flowers and there are all those maids staring up at you with their big black eyes.

What happens next is sometimes quite horrible.

Along comes a grumpy old roebuck starting to think of the rut and how he can kill all the other bucks in the wood and bites off the heads of all those Venus girls and swallows them whole.

It is always tragic for us sentimental humans.

Just as violent and yet fascinating too, is the appearance of the broomrapes.

What a name.

Yes, this is a sinister and robust customer that got his name from raping the broom. Weird is it not?

What that means is that the plant attacks and overpowers the roots of certain innocent plants such as the broom.

It is a parasite and so does not need chlorophyll like all normal hard-working plants who construct sugars out of soil, water and sunlight.

It much resembles another brown plant, the bird's nest orchid, which is why I have put it with a true orchid for your interest.

This one is parasitic on the roots of knapweed.

It's a brute, a beast, but I think it's got beauty of its own too.