NEWS
We ask members to rally round to support our Annual Show on 7 March, in particular:
- Help with catering, to provide cakes etc. – Grazyna has a list.
- Volunteers to help run the kitchen, tombola etc. This is a pressing need, as a number of members who would ordinarily help are away.
- Orchids for repotting demonstrations – a good opportunity to have that moribund orchid given a new lease of life!
- Orchids in flower for the show table – anything respectable! Tidy them up first – remove dead leaves, sheaths, bracts, cut off dead leaf tips. Also foliage houseplants for background. Please bring plants 8-9am on Saturday to give time for the show table build.
Discounted tickets for this year’s International Orchid Show at Gardeners’ World Live, Birmingham are available via our Treasurer, Lynda.
We’re looking for a member to host our Summer Garden Party this year. If you’d like to consider this, please speak to Grazyna who will tell you what it involves.
If any member has access to a minibus or has an idea for a Society outing, please speak to our Secretary, Carol.
Any member interested in becoming an accredited British Orchid Council (BOC) judge should speak to Andy, who is currently undertaking the training. Our April 2026 meeting will no doubt be of help. Also, the BOC is currently looking for someone to act as its Vice-Chairman; it’s a worthy organisation, but it needs people to run it and has come perilously close to folding through lack of support in recent years.
Finally, Paul Atkin won the 2025 BOC photo competition (see https://britishorchidcouncil.org.uk/photographic-competition/). This is the third year in a row that a member of Suffolk Orchid Society has won this competition, David Kohn having won it in 2023 and 2024.
GUEST SPEAKER
Our guest speaker this month was Leif Bersweden, who presented (via Microsoft Tems) an account of his quest to see all of the UK’s orchids bar one during his gap year summer (2013). (The exception was the Ghost Orchid, which has only been seen in the UK twice this century – see https://www.positive.news/environment/britains-rarest-wild-orchid-discovered-again-after-15-years-of-searching/). Obsessed with plants since childhood, the Collins Complete Guide to British Wildflowers brought Leif a narrower focus on Britain’s native orchids. There are 50-60 orchid species native to the UK; the exact number is dependent on taxonomy and chance introductions from the Continent. It’s a very charismatic group with great variety, and their rarity adds to their appeal.
The challenge
Leif had seen 30 species by the time he finished school and decided to take a gap year to see all of them in one summer. This entailed a lot of planning during the preceding winter, and the acquisition of an old car and a tent. The hunt started in April/May 2013.
The journey
The various species’ populations are located all over the UK, and visits of course had to be when they were in flower. The journey went from South Wales, to Salisbury, to East Kent, to Gloucestershire, to North Uist (Shetland Islands)… Leif focused on the Fly Orchid (Ophrys insectifera, found on the Burren, County Clare) and its exploitation of male digger wasps to effect pollination; and on a hiccup on the way to see the Lesser Twayblade (Neottia cordata) near Newcastle, when his car broke down irretrievably and the AA took him home; his father then stepped in heroically to return him to Newcastle to see the orchid! The rest of the search had to be done using a hire car. In total, Leif travelled nearly 10,000 miles on his quest.
The book
Leif subsequently wrote a book about his quest, ‘The Orchid Hunter: A young botanists search for happiness’, that was published in 2017 (see https://leifbersweden.com/books/). To conclude his talk, he read a short extract from the book, describing how he absconded from a family gathering in order to see the Burnt Orchid (Neotinea ustulata).
