In the Pink 7th August 2024

Last night I called Peter about going to see some Violet Helleborines growing in a beech wood in The Chilterns.I would be passing close to his home and I thought he would be keen to join me as three of the helleborines, there were seven in total, were of the very rare form Epipactus purpurata Var. rosea. This plant has no chlorophyll and consequently is rather beautiful and strange, the entire plant including the leaves and stem being a pale shade of rose pink with whiter flowers. As it has no chlorophyll the helleborine has to rely for its survival on mycorrhizal fungi found below the ground and on which its roots feed in a symbiotic relationship.

The Violet Helleborine nowadays is a rare and local plant in southern England so the opportunity to go and see an even rarer rosea example was pretty much irresistible to both of us.

There was no hurry as, unlike twitching a rare bird, the helleborines would not fly away or disappear overnight and would be guaranteed to be in place when we arrived to view them. Consequently I made a relaxed drive across a mild but grey and windy central Oxfordshire to collect my fellow orchid enthusiast at 10am.

A forty five minute drive took us from Oxfordshire into Buckinghamshire and eventually to a small layby between two villages where we could leave the car and take to a wide track, walking gently up into a very pleasing countryside of rolling hills and undulations that comprised this area of The Chilterns.

The walk to the helleborines took us through an area that looked to be under some form of country stewardship with fields full of wild flowers, notably a sea of wild carrot and a supporting cast of sky blue scabious, purple knapweed, sweet smelling marjoram, yellow catsears and ragwort amongst others.

The track wound its way uphill, eventually taking us into  mature beech woodland at the top of one of the gently contoured hills, the huge trees with  smooth trunks, elephant skin grey, towering above us, the  green canopy creating a cavern in which we stood in partial gloom whilst at our feet lay the deep and brown litter of previous year's fallen beech leaves and mast.

I had a precise location for the helleborines courtesy of a wonderful invention called What Three Words that would guide us to within a three metre square of where the helleborines were to be found.

On our walk we remarked on the almost complete absence of butterflies or any obvious insect life.It has been a disastrous year for insects and I felt a distinct sense of foreboding about the way nature is on the retreat in Britain - said to be the most nature depleted country in Europe.

We walked slowly forward under the beech trees until my app told me we had reached the right spot. At first we could not see our prize but after a minute Peter found the helleborines. There were four of the normal kind and three of the rosea variety, all seven clustered together but your eye was drawn immediately to the three spikes of the pale almost luminescent rosea, leaning towards the light at the edge of the wood.

The two varieties of Violet Helleborine

Violet Helleborine Epipactus purpurata Var rosea

I found myself wondering how we could have not seen them immediately but they were so close to the track, we had been expecting them to be far less obvious and consequently were looking further out towards the woodland edge. Hopefully their 'invisibility in plain sight' will allow them to survive without untoward disturbance, which thankfully it has up to now.

An involuntary gasp heralded my first sight of them so startlingly ghostly and alien looking were they on the dull palette of the woodland floor.

To protect them they had been encircled with fallen branches and twigs to keep off nibbling deer and any chance of being trod on. Carefully we parted the protective branches and took our photos. Treating these plants with great tenderness and affording them due reverence.

We were entirely alone in the wood and saw no one else which for both of us enhanced the experience as we paid our respects to these helleborines, standing in mute and fragile beauty within the wood. 

A 'normal' Violet Helleborine Epipactus purpurata

Violet Helleborine Epipactus purpurata Var. rosea

Violet Helleborines Epipactus pupurata and Var. rosea

After paying our respects to the helleborines we carefully replaced their protective corral of twigs and branches and took a casual wander around the environs of the wood looking for any other hidden delights, ultimately finding a lone Broad leaved Helleborine towards the edge of the wood.

More than satisfied we took our leave of this part of The Chilterns and now headed back towards Oxfordshire and Aston Rowant NNR in particular, which is further northwest in The Chilterns, encompassing parts of Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire.

This time we were going to look for Chiltern Gentians, another rare plant confined in Britain to, yes you guessed it, The Chilterns and mainly found in Buckinghamshire. Aston Rowant NNR is one of the few places where the Chiltern Gentian can be found in Oxfordshire which makes it a very rare plant in the county. Elsewhere in Europe it is relatively widespread.

Fortunately we both knew precisely where to go at Aston Rowant and made our way to a western facing chalk downland slope that looks out over the Vale of Oxfordshire. I confess to having a great  affection for this place. For me it has it all. Chalk downland full of flowers and insects and a benign loneliness which always takes my mind to a lovely poem by Thomas Arnold called The Scholar Gypsy (based on a legend about a scholar who forsook Oxford University to forever roam the surrounding hills) and that was put to music by Ralph Vaughan Williams. On hearing the words and music it still raises the hairs on my neck, so relevant is it to this particular part of Aston Rowant.

I digress. So back to the matter in hand. 

We walked to the furthest end of the steep slope and set about searching for Chiltern Gentians. It is not as easy as it sounds for there are also the commoner Autumn Gentians here, both gentians flowering at the same time, growing together, looking very similar and prone to hybridise. To secure a definite identification  requires getting down on hands and knees and examining the flowers as this is where one can find the main distinguishing features, which in the case of the Chiltern Gentian are delicate fine white stamens forming a circle inside the flower and a wrinkly pattern to the outside of the tube formed by the sepals.

A Chiltern Gentian showing the fine white stamens and wrinkled sepal tube that
encases each flower

Considered one of the prettiest of their kind, Chiltern Gentians can grow between 5-20cms tall with purple violet, trumpet shaped flowers thrust upwards  the unopened buds like ladies lipsticks, with dark green leaves, all in a cluster fuster at the top of a reddish stem. Individual plants were scattered randomly and widely over the sward appearing as dark spikes of varying height amongst the wind waving downland grasses. The Chiltern Gentian is a biennial which can mean that one year they will be numerous and the next year not so.Judging by the number present today this is a good year.

The strong wind blowing from the southwest made the exposed slope a tad uncomfortable until a sunny spell would arrive to warm the slope but it did not take long for both of us individually to find a number of Chiltern Gentians.

Chiltern Gentian

From a beautiful and scenic location we now moved to the opposite, driving into Oxford in heavy traffic and parking in a suburban service road before making our way to a hidden gem of a reserve tucked away amongst houses and hospitals. 

I am of course writing about The Lye Valley Nature Reserve, a narrow strip of botanical and ecological wonder, comprising a very rare and ancient fenland habitat that has been preserved against all odds, is owned by Oxford City Council, located almost in the heart of a busy city, and is lovingly tended by volunteers from the Friends of Lye Valley Nature Reserve. It is a designated SSSI and contains twenty plants that are rare in Oxfordshire, fourteen of which  are endangered and on the England Red List.

Our visit was to specifically view one of these plants called, rather wonderfully and exotically Grass of Parnassus which flowers here at this time of year in some profusion on the wetter parts of the reserve. The name derives from Ancient Greece when cattle on Mount Parnassus were partial to eating it and hence it was an 'honorary grass' although it is more closely related to saxifrages. Now very much less widespread in Britain than in times past due to continual draining of wetlands it is mainly found in Scotland and northern England where damp pastures, boggy moors and marshes remain.The last specimens I saw were by a burn at Caithness in the far north of Scotland many years ago.

There are however still a few localised areas in southern Britain where it can be found such as the Norfolk Broads and fens and The Lye Valley, being a wet fen, is also still favoured by its presence.

Grass of Parnassus

At first it was hard to locate them amongst the profusion of other 'white flowers' such as Wild Carrot, Parsley Water Dropwort and Wild Angelica but soon the ivory white, chalice shaped flowers of the Grass of Parnassus, their petals delicately veined with translucent green stripes, were picked out amongst the vegetation. As we looked more and more became apparent, each flower or globe like bud held on a long green stem, the plants  stretching across and up the bank from the boardwalk on which we stood.

We took our photos and what I think is an Oak Bush Cricket photo bombed the flower on which I was focusing my camera but I took no offence.

It was a fitting end to what was for me an immensely rewarding and enjoyable day looking at some of the remaining natural diversity that is still there for all to see in our land.