It’s been a particularly good year for autumn ladies’ tresses, those miniature orchids whose whorls of ivory-white flowers give them their evocative name. Walking to Portland Bill last weekend we had a second look at a wonderful large colony of them, well over a thousand in all, growing (as orchids often seem to do) in a most unpromising and not especially attractive spot. But for the first time we also noticed scattered examples dotted along the cliffs all the way to the Bill.
They seem to thrive – or at least be able to survive – on the most closely-bitten turf, even right on the cliff edge, in the teeth of the fiercest winds and the windblown salt; everywhere else they’re out-competed by more vigorous grasses and larger plants. If you lie down and get close enough to them their minute flowers smell faintly sweet too, with the slightest hint of vanilla – or at least that’s what they smelled like to me.
