Blooming Orchids
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What types of wild orchids can be found in Ireland?
Staying with plants. In fact, it's all about plants today and herbariums and all that kind of stuff.
But Terry, you want to tell me about an orchid? Yes. My report this week, I didn't have very far to travel for it either. Larry Gordon is a naturalist who looks after the grounds of St. Teresa's Church in Mount Merion. And along with Kate McLaughlin, who's also in the Irish Wildlife Trust, they've been caring for the wild orchids that are growing on the church lands there now. And they've been doing it for 25 years. Church grounds, because they're not disturbed, they tend to make very good habitats for orchids. In fact, for many years, I remember travelling down to Carra in County Kildare, where I used to meet Father Jackie O'Connell to see the spectacular displays of orchids he had in his church grounds, particularly bee orchids.
Anyway, Larry got in touch with the programme to say that the orchids in Mount Merion were looking splendid at the moment. And he invited me over to see them. So on a warm summer's morning, I travelled to meet Larry and Kate.
Just where you're standing, Terry, we're actually within a few feet, I should say a metre, of four different species of Irish native orchids.
Who are the caretakers of the orchids at St. Theresa's Church?
So we're in a meadow here. We're actually in Mount Merion.
In Mount Merion Parish on the church grounds, an area that has never really been... plowed or fertilized or treated with weed killer but it has over the years been plowed up and relayed when the church was being built when the school was being built but it appears the seed bank was just put back across the top of it and this is what has come up now before we start talking about the orchids that are present here this is a beautiful meadow because i'm seeing lots of different plants i've seen the nap weeds in it i'm seeing all of the different birds for traffic i'm seeing here
some of the wild carrot plants and that, but really what I've come to see today are the orchids. Now, you've said that there are four species here. Let's have a look at them. Show me one of them.
Well, now, right in front of me, and it escapes from my eye all the time because it's so greenish that you could easily mistake it for a grasshead. That's a tway blade, so-called from the two great big leaves at the base of it.
I see it, yeah. It just kind of hides away there, doesn't it?
You can miss it easily because it's so greenish.
And I can see the next one you're going to talk about.
Right beside it is the bee orchid.
What makes church grounds suitable habitats for orchids?
About 20 centimetres away.
20 or 30 centimetres away. And it's just coming into flower. And it has this most spectacular flower that imitates the appearance of a bee.
Yeah.
The plan being evolutionary terms, that a male bee will come along. and attempt to have a romance with this flower, and thus distribute the pollen from plant to plant.
It's a nice story, but it's not totally true.
Well, this might have been true, you know, sometime in geological aeons, but nowadays, apparently, they're mainly self-fertile, or possibly pollinated by flies.
I love the name, pseudo-copulation.
I have actually seen bees fly towards the bee orchid, and then pause in mid-air, and then kind of apologetically fly off.
I know well when you look at them too and you get down close to that flower and you see those little two yellow what they're called pollinia they contain the pollen and it looks just like a bee it does it does the belly of it is exactly like a bee a friend who has bad eyesight said to me once when I was looking at them careful there's a bee on that flower it's all right it don't sting Okay, so that's two of them we're after, seeing the twey blade, and we're after seeing the bee orchid. I presume the next one, because I see loads of them there in the distance, are the pyramidal orchids.
Well, over here, again, you have two different species within 30 centimetres of each other. This beautiful, vivid, vivid violet-purple mauve, don't know what you call that, lurid colour. With a characteristic pointed top. It's called the pyramidal orchid. And it's a very dominant species in this meadow that we're looking at.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What types of wild orchids can be found in Ireland?
0:00–1:06
2
Who are the caretakers of the orchids at St. Theresa's Church?
1:06–2:14
3
What makes church grounds suitable habitats for orchids?
2:14–4:06
4
How do different species of orchids interact with their environment?
4:06–6:30
5
What are the characteristics of the bee orchid?
6:30–13:13
6
How do the pyramidal orchids differ from other species?
13:13–15:14