There is only one natural site for the English lady's slipper, Cypripedium calceolus, (Fig. Upper Right), a secret site "somewhere in Yorkshire", where this wonderful plant grows wild, but even there only about five specimens thrive. During the season local botany students take sleep and sentry shifts, their tents attached to electric tripwires around the caged plants. Seed from these plants has been propagated and seedlings planted out in several original sites.

There is another site, on a golf course near Silverdale, Lancaster, where an unknown Edwardian botanist planted a lady's slipper of European origin; it is the only place in Britain where the public can see the plant, and 900 people made the trek to see the nine flowers this year.

Then somebody stole it. Simply ripped off the above-ground parts, probably damaging the tubers in the process. "Orchid people take their plants very seriously and for some of them this was such a once-in-a-lifetime experience that they were in tears," a spokesman for English Nature said.

Meanwhile at Royal St George's golf links at Sandwich in Kent, plans were under way to protect Britain's biggest colony of lizard orchids (Hymantoglossum hircinum), (Fig. Lower Right), from the expected 150,000 visitors to the British Open. Some areas of dune were roped off5 and flower marshals patrolled others. The course is a refuge for several other rare plants and birdies, and is proud of its natural heritage. Furthermore the lizard orchid is starting to make an appearance at other English golf courses, its light seeds apparently hitching a ride on the gear of visiting golfers.

Nearly every one of us can talk about pointing out a rare plant to a visiting garden club or similar group, only to come on members of the same group digging the plant up the next day - or more likely, finding the holes whence the plants have disappeared.

In some commercial nurseries "nursery grown" plants may be wild-collected ones that have been in the nursery for only one growing season (a practice called "nursery-laundering").

Although it is important to document new locations for rare species, all unnecessary collecting should be avoided, especially when only a few individual plants are found. Although collecting has little adverse effect on common orchid species, it can have a devastating effect on species already in peril. Alternatives to collecting, for purposes of scientific documentation, include photographs, sketches, measurements, and detailed notes.