An extremely rare orchid is once again blooming in the United Kingdom's wilderness — almost a century after it was presumed extinct.
The lady's slipper orchid (Cypripedium calceolus) sounds like something out of a fairy tale, and the story of its recovery is fittingly fantastic. It involves a chance discovery, a committee sworn to secrecy, and decades of work.
With its distinctive coloring and shape, it was irresistible to collectors in the Victorian era, as Phys.org reported. It was overpicked and believed to have disappeared by the turn of the century; however, a single precious wild specimen was discovered in Yorkshire in 1930.
The Cypripedium Committee was formed to protect the orchid from extinction, and its members kept the location of the lone survivor a closely guarded secret.
They watched over the plant and pollinated it by hand, and the seedlings were brought to the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, London. Researchers propagated the plant in the 1990s after successful micropropagation experiments with other orchids.
The Yorkshire Wildlife Trust began planting new seedlings in secret locations and kept them under lock and key to prevent grazing by animals and to stop poaching.
Jono Leadley, the managing director of the project to restore the orchid to the wild, described it as "a truly thrilling moment."
The story of hundreds of volunteers working to keep a delicate orchid alive in the wild highlights just how inspiring and effective taking local action can be.
Thought-to-be extinct or near-extinct plants come back from the brink all the time. Nature is resilient when given the chance to thrive through the efforts of laboratories and civic-minded people.
Leadley told the BBC that while the organization behind the effort is keeping tight-lipped for now, he hopes the orchids will be back in larger numbers for future generations.
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"We've got to keep it guarded for now, but hopefully at some point in the future there'll be so many of these plants out there that everybody will be able to enjoy them," he said.
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