Today managed by the National Trust, perched on the Cotswold escarpment, Minchinhampton Common’s grassland (once upon a time part of an Iron-Age Fort, a wooded landscape then partially quarried centuries ago) is a good place to look for Bee orchids rising from the grass like newly-polished velveteen gems. Each of these little jewels is a flower designed to look, feel, and even smell like a female bee sitting among pink petals to attract amorous males to mate with it. This process, known as “pseudocopulation”, is intended to get the flower pollinated without it having to produce nectar. Get political: write to your MP, make your views heard on social media, object to planning proposals on rare Cotswold grassland. Most of all, we can spread the word and encourage friends, family, and colleagues to do what needs to be done. As I explore in my book, The Orchid Outlaw, in this respect our native orchids matter: they are not only biodiversity indicators, they tell a story about the planet, our place in it, and how to save it. The story they reveal concerns us all. The land at Cleeve Common has been left largely unchanged for centuries, and offers good opportunities for spotting orchids. (c) Getty Images The enchantingly beautiful native orchid is, tragically, one of Britain’s most endangered wildflowers, but it’s still possible to see them if you look in the right places, says Ben Jacob, author of The Orchid Outlaw. Funder reveals how O’Shaughnessy Blair self-effacingly supported Orwell intellectually, emotionally, medically and financially ... why didn’t Orwell do the same for his wife in her equally serious time of need?’

orchids in the Cotswolds | Great Precious and threatened: orchids in the Cotswolds | Great

Saving Britain’s orchids is about more than beauty in the wild; it is about protecting and preserving the rich tapestry of our natural heritage’One of Britain’s first-flowering varieties is the early purple orchid (Orchis mascula), found in ancient woodlands and meadows. In fact, no one had rescued them and no one was languishing in prison for their destruction. I took a closer look at the Act and discovered it excuses any “lawful operation or other activity” from razing tracts of rare habitat along with all that lives there. This is partly why, for decades, this Act has not really worked. This isn’t just about orchids – many populations of protected species and habitats have steadily declined since 1981. You might think this would indicate that changes in the law or how it is applied are long overdue. In the shady depths of beech forests, the otherworldly bird’s-nest (named after its scruffy, nest-like rhizomes) lives underground without sunlight, only sending its spikes of bone-coloured flowers into the daylight. Our two species of butterfly orchid — the increasingly rare lesser butterfly and commoner greater butterfly — have flowers like winged serpents sculpted by Dalí out of lemon meringue. They are pollinated by night-flying moths attracted to their lily-like scent and the ethereal glow they produce by moon and starlight. In contrast, the lizard orchid has been said to smell of goat and can have yard-high banners smothered in twisted petals like lizards’ tails. When summer segues into autumn, the last of Britain’s wild orchids, autumn lady’s-tresses, raises its little spires hung with pale, honey-scented bells and offers its nectar to incongruously large bumblebee pollinators. Charles Darwin studied the way bumblebees pollinated these flowers and how this orchid has a very clever mechanism for ensuring cross-pollination. By doing so, these native flowers proved his theory of coevolution: the flowers would not look or operate that way without the presence of bumblebees. Similarly, without their pollinators, orchids such as the early spider would not have evolved to look, feel and smell as they do.

orchids turned me into an outlaw Rescuing doomed orchids turned me into an outlaw

Even more remarkable is the fact that although Bee orchids evolved this specialised method of pollination, in the absence of their pollinators they further adapted to be able to pollinate themselves. Several varieties of Bee can be found on Minchinhampton Common, alongside the lilac steeples of Chalk Fragrant-orchids with their strong, sweet perfume, and the green-flowered Frog orchid, which, in recent years, has become increasingly rare. Greater Butterfly orchids with flowers like pale green winged serpents also grow there. At night they emit a scent of lilies. As did all our flora, orchids evolved to inhabit ecosystems specific to these isles, such as ancient beech forests, bogs, heaths, woodland clearings, marshes and meadows. Humans have made these habitats fragmented and rare. One species of orchid, summer lady’s-tresses, went extinct in Britain in the 1950s. Another, Irish lady’s-tresses, died out in the 1990s. The gorgeous lady’s slipper, with its sun-yellow pouch and burgundy braids, clings on in the wild as a single plant. The endangered red helleborine (Cephalanthera rubra), one of Britain’s rarest plants. Credit: GettyBy now you are probably working out that Ben Jacobs is covering a lot of ground in this book. Law, science, and simple botany, plus habitat niceties, policy of local government officers and other groundkeepers… and did I say simple botany? Orchids are anything but simple. They are the most amazing, most complicated flowering plants you can imagine, and it turns out they even have their own mycorrhizal fungi they like to cohabit with ( like trees). Ben Jacob leads a secret life as a clandestine ecologist. His first book, The Orchid Outlaw, blends memoir, cultural history, and nature writing to recount his illegal efforts to save England's orchids from destruction. These adverts enable local businesses to get in front of their target audience – the local community. About 10 years ago I turned outlaw to save orchids. It happened after I found some white flowers spiralling out of the short turf of a roadside verge at the city’s edge. They belonged to a near-threatened species of wild orchid called Autumn Lady’s-tresses. Their blooms, quivering in the slipstream of passing vehicles, gave that day a shot of unexpected joy. After all, it’s not often you get to see rare flowers on an urban stroll. Distracted, I didn’t notice the nearby signs advertising a forthcoming housing development. So, what can we do to preserve these areas and the rare flora and fauna which live there? Firstly, never underestimate the power of you. Despite politicians’ carefully scripted sound bites, for decades legislation and policy in this country has failed to adequately protect our nature. That is a story not exclusive to orchids and the Cotswolds: the native inhabitants of these islands are dwindling at an unsustainable rate. This should concern all of us, for biodiversity is part of the fabric which allows this planet, our economies, societies, and future generations, to function. Without policy-makers turning this into the priority it deserves to be, saving our island’s nature and our children’s future is down to us.

PEW Literary | Author | Ben Jacob

Part memoir, part fascinating history of our most exotic and yet overlooked flower, this is nature writing with a real story. Ben shares with us his mission, and raises urgent questions about our environmental legislation.

The spectacular lady orchid (Orchis purpurea), likened to ‘little women in burgundy skirts and bonnets’. Credit: Marianne Majerus