The Orchid Outlaw: On a Mission to Save Britain's Rarest Flowers

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Eco-writing has been all the rage for some time now, and it has gone through several phases, each of which has reflected the growing general trend in non-fiction for personalised narratives.

The Orchid Outlaw by Ben Jacob | Waterstones

It’s not just the law, but also the intricacies of orchids themselves that add to the many obstacles I have faced, but whatever the trials and tribulations, as I explore in The Orchid Outlaw, our orchids are fascinating, magical, beguiling plants, they have been part of human culture for centuries, and they are, in many ways, canaries in the coalmine, indicators of the state of our islands’ nature. To me, they look more like little paper models of strange lime-and-chocolate lollipops quivering in the breeze.This process, known as “pseudocopulation”, is intended to get the flower pollinated without it having to produce nectar. This isn’t just about orchids – many populations of protected species and habitats have steadily declined since 1981. I took a closer look at the Act and discovered it excuses any “lawful operation or other activity” from razing tracts of rare habitat along with all that lives there.

orchids in the Cotswolds | Great Precious and threatened: orchids in the Cotswolds | Great

Despite politicians’ carefully scripted sound bites, for decades legislation and policy in this country has failed to adequately protect our nature. His first book, The Orchid Outlaw, blends memoir, cultural history, and nature writing to recount his illegal efforts to save England's orchids from destruction. Ben Jacob turned outlaw by saving orchids slated for destruction, risking prison by tracking down rare species, digging them out in the middle of the night and replanting them in safe places.

Sign our petition to keep people in their homes Urgent action is needed to prevent even more people being pushed into homelessness. Some of these are woodland plants, others prefer northern limestone habitats; some have flowers like blunt-tipped, five-pointed stars drooping from tall stems, others have slender, snaking stalks and graceful flowers that open like birds in flight. Several varieties of Bee can be found on Minchinhampton Common, alongside the lilac steeples of Chalk Fragrant-orchids with their strong, sweet perfume, and the green-flowered Frog orchid, which, in recent years, has become increasingly rare.

PEW Literary | Author | Ben Jacob

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. Climate breakdown is another powerful force, capable of devastating species and forever changing habitats. These include the Bee which looks (and smells) so much like one that even bees are fooled, the Ghost which exists without sunlight, and Autumn Lady's Tresses which gave Darwin the proof he needed for his theory of evolution.There’s a lot of vandalism on golf courses, as well as safety concerns for young people playing golf.

The Orchid Outlaw - Wainwright Prize The Orchid Outlaw - Wainwright Prize

The gorgeous lady’s slipper, with its sun-yellow pouch and burgundy braids, clings on in the wild as a single plant.When summer segues into autumn, the last of Britain’s wild orchids, autumn lady’s-tresses, raises its little spires hung with pale, honey-scented bells and offers its nectar to incongruously large bumblebee pollinators. This is a consequence of a shift made about two centuries ago from millennia-old forms of land management to industrialisation. It happened after I found some white flowers spiralling out of the short turf of a roadside verge at the city’s edge. Changes in land use and climate are responsible, but so too are Britain’s outdated environmental and planning laws, which seem incapable of protecting rare species in the face of the drive to build new homes and infrastructure. He spends his life (and risks prison) tracking down rare orchids and rescuing them from unwitting destruction on the building sites and greenbelt developments of Britain.