On May 30, 9:34*am, Sally Thompson wrote:
On Fri, 29 May 2009 23:41:17 +0100, K wrote
(in article ):





{Sally wrote}

As some of you will know, we manage most of our large garden as a
wildflower
meadow/wildlife friendly environment, which means among other things that
we
only cut the grass twice a year, and we spread some hay bales from a
wildflower-rich meadow in autumn. *Imagine our delight then to find some
pyramid orchids growing there for the first time! *No bad for land which
was
the spoil tip from a brick yard when we bought it!
Just thought I would share our pleasure.

You must be absolutely delighted!

Some orchids do well on basically ex-industrial land. The last pyramidal
orchid I saw was on top of a Hoffman kiln, and the brick walls of the
kiln had a thriving colony of bee orchids.

That's interesting Kay since this particular part of the garden has the
poorest soil - it took years for it to even green up a little. *It must
thrive on that kind of soil.

--
Sally in Shropshire, UK
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Many of the wild orchids you find in the UK (and Ireland :-) grow very
very slowly and use mycorrhizal fungi to help them get whatever
nutrients are available. That means they can gow on very poor soil.
Pyramidal orchids do not need much by way of nutrients.