Britain’s rarest orchid spotted for first time in 15 years

Britain’s rarest orchid, considered the “holy grail” by botanists, has been discovered in an English wood for the first time in 15 years.
The ivory white ghost orchid lacks chlorophyll, meaning it does not need sunlight and can be found in deep, dark woodland.
The location of the single orchid, the first to be sighted since a single 5cm one was spotted in 2009, is hard to access and is being kept secret to protect it.
Even without the risk of people trampling it, the flower can often only survive for hours because it is eaten by slugs, deer and other animals. “These plants are super, super vulnerable to predation,” said Richard Bate, who found and photographed it.
Bate, a dental surgeon and member of the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland, started looking for the species on his tenth birthday and has spent three decades on his quest. “Knowing that the ghost orchid is still here and hasn’t gone extinct in Britain fills me with hope for the future of this species,” he said.
The society has authenticated his record, one of a few dozen confirmed sightings since the flower was first seen in Herefordshire in 1854. It was ­declared extinct in 2009, just weeks before a single specimen was recorded, again in Herefordshire. Previous sightings have been made in Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Shropshire.
Ian Denholm of the botanical society said: “The ghost orchid has long been the holy grail for British botanists.
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“There was a brief flurry of records in the 1960s and 1970s, and I was lucky enough to see a single specimen in the mid-1980s. Since then, I reckon only six people have knowingly observed it in the wild in Britain. It is wonderful news that it has reappeared and let’s hope it does again.”
Kevin Walker, the society’s head of science, said: “This is an outstanding discovery by Richard and is a fitting ­reward for his years of painstaking searching. Anyone who has tried and failed to see this enigmatic plant will know just how skilful and lucky you have to be.
“They are incredibly hard to spot amongst leaf litter and often only ­persist for a matter of hours or days.”
The orchid is native to Florida, the Bahamas and Cuba. Described by Kew Gardens as “surrounded by an air of mystery and intrigue,” only about 1,500 remain in South Florida and fewer than 500 in Cuba. The flowers, according to Kew, “possess a beautiful fragrance which is only released at night.”
Poaching poses one of the most significant threats to its survival. In the most infamous case, John Laroche, the American horticulturist, was arrested in 1994 after setting out to find and clone the ghost orchid for profit in Florida. The case was popularised in Susan Orlean’s 1998 book The Orchid Thief.
The orchid is classified as “critically endangered”, the last step before being ranked “extinct in the wild”, by the Red List of endangered species. Picking or digging up the plant is illegal.