“’Do you know that lady?’ Gatsby indicated a gorgeous, scarcely human orchid of a woman who sat in state under a white-plum tree.” From The Great Gatsby, of course.

It works the other way round, too. A non-human orchid has a scarcely vegetal gorgeousness that makes it leap out from more humdrum plants. And there it was on the marsh behind our house: the first I had seen here for a few years.

I may be a Bad Botanist but I did my best. I took a photo and looked it up… and then I asked a Good Botanist and she said yes, it was a common spotted orchid: “Not at all common despite its name.”

The business end was a spike of many flowers – florets, I should say — each one pink and thickly streaked with a darker and more purple pink. It was wonderfully lavish and perfectly wild: a preening superstar in the middle of all those grasses, rushes, sedges and reeds.

Cindy was putting her bags in the car, off to a wedding, gone for a few days and somewhat time-stressed. “But it might have stopped flowering by the time you get back.” So she admired the orchid at full speed before hurrying back to the car. As I waved her off I could hear the bark of a distant muntjac: a deeply wild sound that always pleases me.

I checked the orchid every time I walked the marsh, noting that more and more of the florets were opening.  It would be fully open by the time Cindy got back: at its peak of loveliness.

Sunday morning. She’d be back in the evening. I walked the paths: cuckoo singing hard, male and female marsh harriers flying affectionately  around each other. And then – what? I must have missed it. I turned and walked back. No, the orchid definitely wasn’t there.

Surely it had been right here… and so it was. There was still a leaf left, pleasantly spotted as a help to Bad Botanists everywhere. But the flower was gone. Eaten.

Bloody muntjac.

 

 

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