Value Judgements

We human beings find it so difficult not to make value judgements laying ourselves open to charges of prejudice. Just one, of many, reasons I prefer to let nature go its own way.

A neighbour of mine grows orchids as a hobby. I have at times been entrusted with looking after his greenhouse when he was away on holiday, an unnerving responsibility. Some of the blooms are astonishingly beautiful and many are rare items. To compare them with our native flora would be invidious. But it happens.

To choose between those hothouse plants and our commonest native orchid the decision would still be difficult. But in this temperate country it's a matter of resisting the spectacular, the in-your-face and the artificial in nature, as with the brashness of Disney against the restrained artistry of E H Sheppard.

There's no commoner orchid in Britain than the Common Spotted Orchid but on Blacka I've only ever found it in two places which makes it special enough to earn a kind of local scarcity. Care needs to be taken identifying this because a Heath Spotted Orchid can look very similar.

One of these places is in the enclosure set aside for sheep where I've found it only once a year when sheep grazing did not happen.

The other place is interesting. It's where SWT has tried to cut a firebreak. The vegetation which included fast-regenerating birch was cut to within an inch or two of the ground. As things recoverd over several years from this brutality there was a resurgence in bilberry, mountain cranberry and lots of birch, rowan and oak scrub.  After a few years this orchid appeared last year, and now this.

The spots you might look for in a spotted orchid are not the marks on the petals here  ....

........... but those on the leaves.

Colours are variable and interpretations of 'pink' and 'purple' are according to choice.

My value judgement if charged to choose between the survival of this and the spectacular varieties imported and hybridised in greenhouses is not hard to make. Feeling right in this area is not just a whim; it's informed by knowing what nature is likely to produce in a certain country, climate, conditions; all these I know contribute to it feeling 'right'. Where Daisy and Buttercup and Cow Parsley are everywhere and yet still special, the Common Spotted is extra.