On May 31st this year, I visited the Bridgewater Canal by Stretford Mall to check out the orchids. Yesterday afternoon (August 11th), I visited again to see whether the fruit were ripe. As you can see from the second picture above, they were. The Council stopped mowing them sometime in the last thirty years, so they can seed themselves. They have spread to produce a really healthy population and a beautiful show in May/June.
Below you can see another stretch of orchids on the other side of the bridge in the photo above, seen from the bridge. These are just a small part of the total population.
Unfortunately, on the east bank of the canal, you can see a building site that is part of the new development of the canalside. Bars and restaurants will replace the thin, delicate but long habitat that has been allowed to flourish for so long.
It is difficult to assign a species to these plants. They are definitely in the genus Dactylorhiza. Manchester has three local species of Marsh Orchid that could contribute to a range of hybrids. They are notorious for interbreeding and having a spectrum of characteristics.There are other species around, like Dactylorhiza maculata, but they have spotted leaves.
Dactylorhiza purpurella is the Northern Marsh Orchid.
Dactylorhiza praetermissa is the Southern Marsh Orchid.
Dactylorhiza incarnata is the Early Marsh Orchid.
The maps of their known distribution can be found at the Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland Plant Atlas for Dactylorhiza purpurella, Dactylorhiza praetermissa and Dactylorhiza incarnata. They are among the most common orchids in England but are still a delight to see.
Dactylorhiza incarnata flowers tend to be paler or with pale patterning and shorter flower-spikes. I would think most of these plants are a mix of the Northern and Southern Marsh Orchids, though there are some paler ones you can see at the end of this article. Definitely all Marsh Orchids. Kew Gardens now think both the Northern and Southern Marsh Orchids are subspecies of Dactylorhiza majalis.
The Common or Early Purple Orchid (Orchis mascula) has been identified by some scholars as the "Long Purples" mentioned by Shakespeare as made into a garland with other flowers by Ophelia in Hamlet.
Therewith fantastic garlands did she make
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cull-cold maids do dead men's fingers call them
As Ophelia died by drowning in a river, it seems more likely that she would have collected Marsh Orchids than Common Orchids. The Marsh Orchid was also more likely to be named dead man's fingers. The name of the genus Dactylorhiza comes from the Greek daktylos (finger - δάκτυλος) and rhiza (root - ρίζα) from the fingery tubers like a pair of hands. The tubers are dead white when new and a little translucent.
Under the illustration above, the Elizabethan herbalist John Gerard wrote that "Broadleafed Serapias stones hath cleft or divided rootes like fingers". The Orchis latifolia named by Linnaeus in 1753 is now considered to be Dactylorhiza majalis or Dactylorhiza incarnata, though not all of the varieties of those species are broad-leaved. Some authors have said that Orchis mascula had fingery roots but that was just confusion on their part.
We do not know the "grosser name" given to dead man's fingers by the
liberal shepherds of Shakespeare but we can be sure it would have been
grossly sexually suggestive.
The original description of the genus Dactylorhiza by Noel Necker in 1790 included:
"Radix, palmato digitata & fasciculata."
"Root, palmate fingery & bundled."
Many were considered aphrodisiac but also a nutritious food by herbalists, which is why they are now much less common in England than they used to be. The thick mucilaginous and starchy drink made from the roots was called salep. Stalls for selling salep were once very common in London but mostly replaced by coffee by the end of the 18th century. The roots were harvested in England but also imported from Turkey and Asia.
Salep is still popular in many parts of the Mediterranean, western and southern Asia as a drink or in ice cream. The pressures on wild populations is still threatening many wild terrestrial orchids with extinction.
Yesterday, a lot of the fruit were dry and open with large quantities of tiny, dust-like seeds. Some were still unripe and green.
Here are a few more orchid flowers from May 31st under various lighting conditions. Starting with a spike that had only just started to flower.
