Journal Number 91
June 2004

BRITISH ORCHIDS

Red Helleborine (Cephalanthera rubra (L.) Richard)
By David Lang

The Red Helleborine has a moderately wide distribution in central and northern Europe, usually oncalcareous soils, although in Cyprus it is found on volcanic soils in the Troodos Mountains, and on the island of Gotland in the Baltic it grows in sand under pine trees near the sea. In Britain it has always been an exceptionally rare plant, growing almost exclusively in beech woods on either chalk or limestone. Even where colonies are of moderate size, the bulk of the population will be nonflowering, and it is capable of existing in a purely vegetative state for years at a time, only to reappear unexpectedly when it has been presumed dead. The roots carry a very heavy mycorrhizal infection, enabling the orchid to exist saprophytically underground, then reappearing if local conditions change for the better. The felling of mature trees in the vicinity of a colony, resulting in increased light, can be the stimulus required to make the Red Helleborine flower. The Great Hurricane of October 1987 devastated huge areas of mature woodland in southern England, and after the debris was cleared, botanists scoured likely sites in the following years in the hope of rediscovering the Red Helleborine.

This is one orchid where the history and myths associated with it are almost as fascinating as theplants itself. Red Helleborine has been known from beech woods in Gloucestershire for many years, growing originally in three locations, although numbers of plants have decreased greatly in recent years for reasons which are not understood. One of the oldest records is for 1836 in the Quantock Hills of Somerset, but the record was never independently confirmed, and it has never reappeared. There are other old records for Kent, Berkshire and Hertfordshire (1944), but again there has been no verification of the records or extant herbarium material.

Old records of other very rare orchids are usually dismissed as implausible, but a few years ago
a herbarium specimen of the equally rare Military Orchid collected in Kent in 1836, turned up in
a museum in Bolton, Yorkshire! The "myth" of Military Orchids in Kent had always been dismissed
as nonsense.

In 1955 Red Helleborine was discovered in the Chilterns in Buckinghamshire, where it still grows
but flowers erratically despite careful conservation efforts.

My own county of Sussex has three "mythical" records for Red Helleborine. In 1910 it was found on
the edge of a garden in a village called Houghton, but no one knew if it was natural or introduced.
Then there is the famous story of a bunch of Red Helleborine's seen in the hands of a woodcutter
near Poling, only a few miles west of Houghton. Finally in 1991 an entomologist, who knew the species
well in Europe, claimed to have photographed it in flower near Arundel. The picture clearly showed
Red Helleborine, but the background does not enable one to be sure where the picture was taken,
and it has not been refound there. The Arundel site is midway between the other two Sussex sites.

One could easily dismiss the Sussex records as rubbish, except that in 1986, not far away across
the county boundary in Hampshire, Red Helleborine was found flowering in a wood where it had
never been seen before, probably as the result of tree felling nearby.

The erratic behaviour of such a rarity is interesting enough, but the plant is also a real beauty.
The colour of the flowers is intense pink, the unopened buds reminding one strongly of a small
freesia. The flowering spike measures 20-60cm, most plants in Britain being rather small, with only
three to six flowers. The leaves are short, rather dark green and pointed, and also rough to the touch.
The stem and all the floral parts are covered in tiny glandular hairs. The petals and sepals are long
and pointed, arching back to expose the pointed, pink labellum, which has a pale yellow centre and
five to seven orange ridges on the distal half - the epichile.

In England Red Helleborine is pollinated by the male Mason Bee (Osmia caerulescens) and by a small
Solitary Bee, possibly Chelostoma fuliginosa. Small hoverflies also visit the flowers, and I have seen
pollen removed by a Small Skipper butterfly (Thymelicus sylvestris).

Work in Gotland, Sweden, by Dr L Anders Nilsson has demonstrated that pollinating insects are
deceived into visiting the flowers. Red Helleborine has no nectar, but has colour spectrum identical
to that of a nectar producing Campanula. The fragrance is quite different chemically, so it is colour
which acts as a deceit. Seed production in England is poor - maybe our bees are wiser than their
Continental counterparts!

Bibliography

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Jenkinson MN. (1995) Wild orchids of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. Orchid Sundries.
Lang DC. (1989) A guide to the wild orchids of Britain and Ireland. Oxford University Press.
Lang DC. (2001) Wild orchids of Sussex. Pomegranate Press.
Nilsson LA. (1983) Mimesis of bellflower (Campanula) by the red helleborine orchid Cephalanthera rubra.
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