Orchids and globeflowers

Freeness of wild things in protected habitats

It’s mid afternoon and it was just confirmed that our garden table is delayed by another week. Funny to be disappointed by a table but it will become a place to gather, and it has taken us a few years to save for it, or I should say, to justify prioritising it over other life expenses. I console myself that I can finally head off to visit a Yorkshire Wildlife Trust nature reserve I’ve been told about, and set out in our car.

The reserve is where a flower I’ve never seen before grows in great numbers and, while it’s not rare, I’m enjoying the excitement of seeing something new in its wild home. I haven’t felt that draw for a while, not since we moved, because at first everything was new.

Entering the Yorkshire Dales national park, there’s no denying the beauty of the landscape. Verges of sweet cicely rush past the car windows, but it’s a desolate place too. Barren of the woods that line the hillsides where we live near Hebden Bridge. Our home valley of Calderdale is a magical patchwork of habitats, closer to how things should be.

The much celebrated Yorkshire Dales however are stripped bare of trees. Chomped to a flat, unnatural state by excessive numbers of sheep. It seems sad to me, and telling, that the official emblem of the Yorkshire Dales that I pass is the face of a sheep, not one of its many wonderful and rare wild animals or plants.

Pulling in where my sat nav tells me, I see the familiar badger face of Yorkshire Wildlife Trust signs and I feel the heady adrenaline of adventure. It never grows old. Away from everything in a place the modern world can’t get me, in these moments I feel freest of all.

Heading down the hill, following a narrow trodden path, I stop as I almost step on Heath Spotted-Orchid, Dactylorhiza maculata. “Oh, hello,” I say to it and crouch to take a photo. Then, creaking back upright, I lift my head; where there is one orchid there is always certainly more, and I laugh because yes, there are a lot more. Growing in the grass all the way down the slope.

What a place, next to a loud busy road but the quiet envelopes me as I step further.

In among the orchids I spot Ajuga reptans, that familiar wild plant grown in gardens, as well as the odd red-rattle, Pedicularis palustris, a parasitic plant often overlooked for its yellow partner in crime. In damper hollows, Geum rivale, water avens grows with fluffy seed heads forming.

This time, I’m not here for the orchids, though I stop to acknowledge their wonder and presence, this time I’m interested in finding something less rare and my eyes are drawn to the wetland meadows glowing yellow below where I head. Among the buttercups, am I already looking at them?

I’m completely alone and head to the wall with its little gate at the bottom of the slope and step through to the wetland meadows that have begun to dry for summer.

In the meadows, next to the wall I spot the glowing blue of a meadow geranium, Geranium pratense, and then a single patch of soft thistle that look like the garden plant Cirsium rivulare, but I believe are the wild Cirsium heterophyllum. I love the vertical stems and large colourful brushes. Behind it the leaves of common butterbur, Petasites hybridus.

The meadow is a fun mix of buttercups, common daisies, yellow rattle, cats ear and a lot of another parasitic meadow plant, eyebright, or Euphrasia. There is a huge amount of eyebright everywhere, reassuring to see it growing alongside yellow rattle. In our own meadow the yellow rattle has appeared to be outcompeting the eyebright, but perhaps I need to think again. The occasional pink of ragged robin.

Looking around the flat valley basin I look at all of the yellow of buttercups. In some areas, could the yellow be slightly paler? It must be, so I head in that direction. I’m happy and free. Free from the world. Free from worry. Free!

In patches I spot the familiar floating marshmallows of the wild bistort or persicaria, Bistorta officinalis. Something about this plant seems fun and friendly to me and I’m always happy to see it. It likes growing in damp ground and grows around our way too, we have a couple of plants on the farm I’m hoping will spread.

And then I let out another “Oh!” and laugh again because there it is! Right there in front of me. My first globeflower.

Standing just a little larger than the buttercups, Trollius europaeus' flowers are large, closed and rounded, a pleasing soft lemon yellow. The leaves, large and cut, with an attractive matt-dullness toning the green down. I gently hold a flower with my fingers and push the petals open with my thumb and crouch to get my face closer. They have a sweet fragrance. Their leaves feel smooth and thick.

I stand and take a moment, to do the plant justice and not move on too quickly, looking at the plant, absorbing its presence, taking it all in. Where there is one, there is always more and then I finally lift my head and see them.

And I see them.

p.s. in the June issue of Wild Way: Outsider for paid subscribers, I list 10 early-summer plants from our garden I recommend, plus the veg to sow and grow right now…