"Ragnar" wrote ...

Common Spotted is about the most common orchid in UK. In some areas the
Early Purple is more common. Marsh and Pyramidal orchids are somewhat
less common and the other couple of dozen species are quite rare or
extremely rare. They only grow on undisturbed ground such as ancient
pastureland or woodland as they take many years to reach flowering size.

A few years back I saw thousands of Early Purples growing on Warton Crag
(near Carnforth in Lancs). Since then I have never seen more than a few
dozen in the same locality. Other species such as Bee Orchid are prone to
this habit of suddenly appearing in huge numbers then nothing for years.

BTW don't dig them up to plant in your garden because (a) it's against the
law and (b) it won't work anyway - they are the fussiest plants known. You
can't even take the seed because it will not germinate.

The seed will germinate but needs to find it's correct fungus immediately or
it dies. I have had my D. fuchsii and D.maculate hybridise , they are
marginal in our pond, and germinate from seed in an old pot of lilies I
hadn't repotted for some years. I assume the lilies also use the fungus and
the pot was therefore infected to the liking of the orchids. I simply let
them grow for a couple of years and then repotted the lot using the old lily
pot compost for the orchids.
It worked and I now have the old pot of lilies and a separate pot of hybrid
orchids that flower better each year.

--
Regards
Bob Hobden
just W. of London