Lizard Orchid, Himantoglossum hircinum – in Norfolk for the first time since 1956

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In early July this year I was fortunate enough to be able to visit the first Lizard Orchid, Himantoglossum hircinum seen in Norfolk since 1956. The site is being kept secret and the plant is a protected species under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, so if I told you more I would have to shoot you.

Lizard Orchid in Norfolk

Lizard Orchid in Norfolk, July 2015

The discovery of the orchid by Andrew Brown of Old Costessey was reported in the Eastern Daily Press (EDP) on 23rd June. He first discovered the plant two years ago, and had been waiting for it to flower. It was well worth the wait.

My friend Chris Lansdell wrote about the discovery first, on 21st June and his blog includes three good pictures of the Norfolk specimen. Penny Clarke also wrote about it on her blog, on 28th June.

The Lizard Orchids is rare in Britain (see distribution map). Good sites include the golf links at Sandwich in Kent, where the plant occurs in good numbers and, nearer to home, on Devil’s Dyke in Suffolk, near Newmarket Racecourse. The orchid prefers sunny, alkaline sites, such as chalk or limestone grassland or calcareous sand dunes.

The plant is widespread but rare and localised in parts of Southern and Central Europe and it can be seen in large numbers growing on the roadsides in the Lot Valley in France. I first saw the plant on a roadside in the Vendée in France in 1990, followed by several more on a cycling trip in southern France in 2008. The Norfolk plant is, so far, my only British specimen.

Lizard Orchids reputedly smell of goats, but I didn’t realise this at the time, so I missed my chance to verify this finding. Needless to say, the next time I encounter this handsome beast I will have a good sniff.

Lizard Orchid

A French Lizard Orchid, near Saint-Martin-d’Ardèche, 2008

A Tiny Roof Garden

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Roof gardenLast August we built a mini “roof garden” on one of our sheds. It faces west, towards the garden, but could also be positioned to face south or east.

First, we made sure that the roof was sound. The old roofing felt was in poor condition, but instead of replacing it with more roofing felt, we fixed sheets of corrugated, bitumen covered roofing on top. These are very durable and come in a variety of colours – we chose green. The roof should now last for many years, as long as the shed, if not longer. We bought our roofing material from Wickes, but it is also available from other DIY stores, such as B & Q.

Next, we built a wooden frame from offcuts of wood, to hold the “roof garden”. Ours is a rectangle measuring just 760mm by 500mm and about 70mm deep. It is fixed to the roof by a single piece of wood about 850mm long, along its lower edge. 70mm of  soil depth is not very much but it suits drought-tolerant plants; you could make it a bit deeper.

We added an offcut of lightweight permeable weed suppressing fabric to the box we’d built and then filled it with a mixture of garden soil and grit. We planted into this and finally spread a layer of fine gravel on top of the soil as a mulch. This looks good but will also stop weeds from germinating and conserve moisture. The box does not weigh very much, so it is easily supported by the shed roof.

As usual, the planting was the best bit. We chose Houseleeks (Sempervivum), Rock or Welsh Stonecrop (Sedum forsterianum) and Biting Stonecrop (Sedum acre). All are doing very well and are flowering as I write, surviving quite happily on Norfolk’s sporadic, low rainfall. Other species of Sedum, such as White Stonecrop (Sedum album), would do well too.

Why not give it a try?

If you want to do this on a grander scale, The Green Roof Centre website offers advice and case studies and Maddy Harland writes of her own experience of creating a Sedum roof on the Permaculture Magazine website.

Roof garden

Tree Tobacco, Nicotiana glauca

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Tree Tobacco, Nicotiana glauca

When we moved house we held a moving in party of sorts, a day in the garden when friends could drop by and see us. Several friends brought gifts, but the biggest and most impressive after two years is a Tree Tobacco plant, Nicotiana glauca, from our friends Mark and Charlotte.

It is a monster of a plant, a big, amiable thug that towers above the fence at the bottom of the garden. It has thick, rubbery blue-green leaves (hence the name glauca) up to 20cm long and it grows as a large, bush, up to about nine feet (2.7 metres) tall. The tubular, yellow flowers are about 5 cm long and 1 cm wide.

Tree tobacco is related to the cultivated tobacco used in cigarettes (Nicotiana tabacum) but differs in several ways: tree tobacco is a perennial, it isn’t hairy or sticky and its leaves are attached to the stalk by petioles. It is a member of the family Solanaceae, which includes some of my favourite plants – some of which I’ve already written about, such as Sticky Nightshade and Henbane.

Nicotiana glauca comes from South America and is an invasive weed in several parts of the world. It has been naturalised in Europe, Africa, temperate Asia, Australia, New Zealand, United States (including Hawaii), Mexico and Macaronesia. In colder climates it can be grown like a hardy perennial, with its top growth dying back in the winter and new growth starting from the base. Here in Norfolk, the last two winters have been quite mild, so apart from some very slight frost damage, our specimen has not been kept in check. Our sandy soil and the sheltered spot in which it is growing will have helped it to thrive. Our plant has a tendency to lean forward so last autumn I cut back one of the shoots, which has tidied the plant up a bit.

The only disappointment is that insects don’t seem to like the flowers. According to the paper ‘Pollination ecology of the invasive tree tobacco Nicotiana glauca: comparisons across native and non-native ranges’ (Ollerton, Watts et. al., Journal of Pollination Ecology, Vol. 12, 2009), the plant is pollinated by hummingbirds in California and sunbirds in South Africa and Israel, where it sets seed by both out-crossing and selfing. But in areas where there are no such birds, such as the Canary Islands and Greece (and Norfolk), the plant still sets lots of viable seed by self-pollination.

Last year I took cuttings from our plant and this year I have raised some plants from seed. So if you want a monster of your own you know where to come.

All parts of Nicotiana glauca are poisonous. In Israel, a 73-year-old French tourist died after cooking the leaves and her 18-year-old grandson suffered slight poisoning. In California cattle suffered poisoning after grazing on the plant. However, ‘Floating Tuxedo’ has documented his experiences of smoking tree tobacco and reports that the dried leaves “smelled like oregano, and people at the Barnes and Noble bookstore cafe gave me funny looks as I rolled it.” The Cahuilla Indians in California used the leaves interchangeably with other tobacco species in hunting rituals and as a poultice to treat swellings, bruises, cuts, wounds, boils, sores, inflamed throat, and swollen glands.

Nicotiana glauca contains two poisonous alkaloids: nicotine and anabasine. (The two compounds are isomers of each other.)

If you want to grow your own tree tobacco, there is more information on the Hardy Tropicals UK and, for the United States, the Daves Garden websites.

Tree Tobacco, Nicotiana glauca