 |
 |
|
|
The single remaining English Lady's-slipper orchid and its recent descendents live on a protected site in Yorkshire which you can't normally visit. By reputation this is guarded by a special botanical branch of the SAS who have a license to kill and nuke your home town should you even ask where the site is. This photo is therefore a reasonable compromise as it is pretty certain that the plant was planted at this North Lancashire site probably more than 80 years ago.
If it is planted then where did it come from? It could well have been taken from the wild colony in Yorkshire but I was informed that DNA testing has shown that it is actually of Austrian descent. However, I have recently learned that the situation isn't as clear-cut as I had been told:
Apparently the genetic variation of UK and European C. calceolus is not really wide enough for any such split between Europe and UK populations to be made with certainty. It is a real possibility that the UK population actually arrived from continental Europe after the last ice age and so comparisons between the UK and any European population are very likely to lead to similar profiles. There simply hasn't been enough time for big enough evolutionary changes to register in the DNA of the UK population since then.The populations of C. calceolus in other parts of the world such as Russia or China are definitely different from the UK and European ones according to DNA analysis. In fact, scientists wishing to identify a new discovery of C. calceolus from DNA use the term Western European C. calceolus to describe all the plants from Europe including the UK. So what we have in Lancashire may well a United Kingdom C. calceolus because it is effectively genetically indistinguishable from the European population anyway. If this is right then there would be no real discernable genetic difference between this Lancashire "Austrian" specimen and the daughter plants cloned by Kew scientists from the last original C. calceolus in Yorkshire. So you might as well visit friendly Lancashire where the wardens are very helpful and don't wear guns.
It's certainly worth having in the photo collection because I think it will be many more years than I have left before genuine UK population Lady's Slipper orchids (if there are such things) are on general view at the Yorkshire site and I doubt they'll ever point you to the original plant anyway. You can find photographs of the Yorkshire orchid on the Web taken by the English botanical aristocracy but peasants like me will just have to make do with this one.
Incidentally this plant is often referred to as the rarest in the country but this is a bit of an exaggeration. It's probably the rarest spectacular plant in the country but species such as Scleranthus perennis ssp perennis (Perennial Knawel - very dull) or Hieracium snowdoniense (Snowdon Hawkweed - just another yellow composite) are also found only on one site and are even more fragile than Cypripedium calceolus.
North Lancashire, 3rd June 2005
Previous Plant in Latin Index Latin Index English Index Home Page Next Plant in Latin Index
Added on June 3rd 2005 and amended on Oct 3rd 2005