First Church Meadow

Far North East Corner

This far end of First Church Meadow throws up a peculiarity in the distribution of some of the orchids that grow on the reserve. An orchid can produce literally thousands of tiny dust-like seeds per flower and these should be able to be spread far and wide on the wind BUT nevertheless they only seem to grow in the area from roughly the North East boundary hedge to where the pond occurs.
One orchid showing this distribution is Early Purple Orchid (Orchis mascula) and a look at the survey results for this will show this is restricted to this part of the meadow on the whole site.
The Early purple orchid is more robust in appearance than the Green-winged Orchid (Orchis morio) and also normally has dark chocolate brown spots on the leaves although this is not always the case with this particular species.

V.S. Summerhayes in the "Wild Orchids of Britain" covers the germination of orchids and points to two major problems.
The first is the long development time (for Early Purples it is 2 years for the tuber to form with aerial stems in the fourth year and flowering several years after this).
The other factor is the extremely poor germination. With such little food store in the seed and the food making ability being delayed for years before the green aerial parts are produced these orchids are reliant on getting nutrition in their early stages from soil based fungi called mycorhiza (or mycorrhiza). If the fungi is not present then the seed may fail to grow.

The soil surveys on First Church Meadow show no significant difference between any particular nutrient of the pH (except for the very north-eastern corner where a small fire may have artificially raised these). However it may be that the mycorrhiza necessary for the orchid to grow isn't evenly spread throughout the meadow.
Could the underlying cause of the distribution be linked to a difference in the way the meadow was used for agriculture in past times? Looking at Fuller's map of 1656 a thinning tree line can be seen in this area and it is easy to make the jump that the meadow may have been divided and used in different ways prior to 1656 Click here to see the map plus additional notes in a separate window.

Geoffrey Grigson in "The Englishman's Flora" says that there is a long historical association between orchids (and Early Purple orchids in particular) and aphrodisiac food and medicine. This is because the plant has two bulbous root tubers in which the food is stored which bear a striking resemblance to testicles! There is a new firm one which is filling up with food for next year's growth and an old one which is supplying the current needs and is emptying. Apparently each of the tubers could be used to increase or decrease sexual desire depending on which one was used!
In Hamlet Shakespeare included this species in the garlands of the drowned Ophelia which are referred to as the 'long purples' That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, but our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them. The grosser name may have been Priest's Pintel (c.f. the French name testicule de pretre) or some other reference to sexuality.

	The flower of the Early Purple can show some variation in the shade of purple but in this area it is possible to find some pure white albino forms and these have been shown as notes on the survey worksheets. Martin Sandford in "The Orchids of Suffolk" says that the white forms are most uncommon. V.S.Summerhayes points out that the species is normally monocarpic i.e. most of the plants will die after flowering just once and only a small proportion will continue to live on to be found again the following year. However, if the flower spike is cut or bitten off before the seeds are formed, the plant does not die, but seems to cancel out the current flowering year and produce the flowers in the following year. From our surveys we have noted albinos in the same survey square (which is probably but not necessarily the same plant) for several years in succession but in others the albino flower spikes appeared for just one year only.
White (albino) and purple flowers of O.mascula		O.mascula - albino close up

Up to 2006 I was saying that the Pyramidal Orchid (Anacamptis pyramidalis) had a very similar distribution pattern to the Early Purples albeit in far less numbers which is not surprising as Martin Sandford states that they are more common on exposed chalk (not so common in Suffolk) and roadside verges and it is unusual to find them in meadows. However, this year we have also found it growing in Home Meadow.
Nevertheless I think the distribution again may be linked to its prolonged development time. V.S. Summerhayes says that for the first four years the young plant is fed by its mycorhizal fungus and leaves will only be formed in the fifth year, with flowers taking several more years to form.
The photo on the right shows the typical form of this pink orchid and how its name reflects the conical shape of the flower spike (by the way - the brown pods to the left are the ripe pods of Yellow Rattle).
We usually see about 30 or so flower spikes appearing in late June/early July but sometimes just a handful will flower and at other times we have recorded more than a hundred.

Now getting away from orchids there is one more noteworthy plant that grows only in this area - Dyer's Greenweed (Genista tinctoria).
The Latin name was used by the plantagenet line of English monarchs (planta genista - the name of the plant they used as their symbol - although it seems that Broom, not Dyer's Greenweed, was the actual plant that they used to stick in their hats).
According to Geoffrey Grigson the name suggests this plant was used to give a yellow basis for the main colour green. A dipping with this followed by woad (which would render the blue portion); or else the blue wool was "greened" with this Greenweed or Greening-weed.
Dyer's Greenweed is quite widespread in this area of the meadow and although it is cut annually with the hay it manages to thrive and flower before the annual hay cut takes place.

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