BEE ORCHIDS AT CORTON

   Following reports from local wildlife enthusiasts on a colony of Bee orchids at Corton sewage treatment works I made my way over to the site and with the help of Ricky F found the orchids including a few unusual white/yellow variants. As the name suggests the flowers resemble bees and are designed to attract male bees to pollinate them although this mechanism is not usually now used and most plants self pollinate very successfully. They occur over most of the south of the country frequently on poor quality land that has recently been disturbed or on short grassland indeed there is a colony on the wasteland next to the new Tesco store in Gt Yarmouth.

   The colony at Corton consisted of at least 100 flowering stems when I visited including 4 of the Chlorantha variant (white/yellow) which is relatively rare. The flower stems don't grow very high (10 to 45 cm) with usually between 2 and 7 flowers on each stem which look quite exotic on close examination. Individual plants can lay dormant for a few years underground even when they are mature but when they emerge they require at least another year without flowering to build up the tuber reserves before producing a spike. Plants can live beyond 10 years and are quite capable of producing flower spikes for many successive years and each flower can produce up to 10,000 seeds so colonies can grow fairly fast.