Orchidelirium took grip of Victorian Britain, when the aristocracy spent millions transporting pillaged species back from the Tropics, whereupon they would sell for the equivalent of £100,000, according to a new book, The Orchid Outlaw: On a Mission to Save Britain’s Rarest Flowers, by Ben Jacob. The ancient Greeks included British native species among those they named orkis, or testicle later botanists named one genus, literally, after the dog’s bollocks ( Cynosorchis). Over the centuries few plants have turned humans so persistently into magpie-like collectors. Orchids have a habit of flowering when we least expect it – sometimes, in the case of the ghost orchid, once every two decades and being easily missed in-between. It’s a familiar story among those who have relinquished control over their gardens. “It’s there to mark the orchid.” Sui, the woman showing me around, had stopped mowing the lawn in recent years. Among all the green was a blue plastic agility pole for dogs, standing upright. A couple of years ago I stood in a sprawling private garden in Kent that had been, over the past few years, left to rewild.
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