A decades-long bid to bring back one of Britain’s “rarest and most impressive” wildflowers has seen success with the first new plant found in the wild in nearly 100 years.
Conservationists now hope the lady’s-slipper orchid, which came close to vanishing from the English countryside, could one day be restored across its former range.
The striking lady’s-slipper orchid was believed to be extinct in the UK by the early 20th century, due to over-collection by plant hunters gripped by the Victorian orchid craze, and loss of its habitat.
But discovery of a single plant in a remote location in the Yorkshire Dales in 1930 prompted round-the-clock protection by decades of dedicated volunteers, and later efforts to propagate and reintroduce orchids to former haunts.
