The London Orchid Society
London, Ontario - Canada

   TO THE BACK OF BEYOND

IN SEARCH OF A LOST ORCHID

By Michelle Wan

 

The morning dawned cool and misty on that day in June last year.  I was in China, with my husband, Tim, doing research for the fourth book in my Death in the Dordogne murder mysteries—which might seem strange because the Dordogne is in southwest France, and the series is set there.  So what was I doing in China?  Well, without giving too much away, part of Book 4 also takes the reader to Sichuan.  We wore raingear and packed water and food for the day, knowing that by the end of it we would be exhausted, wet, and probably disappointed, for we were off to find Cypripedium farreri, a rare Chinese orchid now on the IUCN’s Red List of threatened species. Few official sightings of C. farreri have been recorded since Reginald Farrer brought it to the attention of westerners 93 years ago.

We were at the end of a three-week trek that had taken us through Yunnan and Sichuan Provinces, Southwest China, in search of wild orchids. Our small group was an international bag of orchid hunters ranging from ardently serious to relative novices.  Tim and I were the only Canadians.  Our tour leader was Dr. Holger Perner, a German orchid scientist and Cypripedium specialist who lives in Chengdu with his wife,Wenqing, and who pursues his calling with the passion of a true conservationist and orchid lover.

I should stress that the Perner expedition was no doddle.  We were up at six most mornings, on our way by 7:30 or 8:00, negotiating difficult mountain roads, hiking and climbing at altitudes of 10,000-13,000 feet, and experiencing some of the world’s worst toilets.  The food (organized by Wenqing, our logistics expert) was excellent if at times exotic.  We ate donkey (served cold, like pastrami), yak (a little stringy), rice paddy eels, wild pine mushrooms, ferns, and lots of Sichuan peppers that make your mouth go numb.  And, to everyone’s great satisfaction, we found, photographed, but scrupulously did not touch, orchids, including the rare Cypripedium wardii, a small gem of a flower, pure white with red spots, and almost as hard to come by as farreri.

That day we set off, protecting our camera equipment from the violent lurching of our borrowed police van as it bumped over the rough forest road en route to our search site.  This was the Wanglang Nature Preserve, deep in the Sichuan highlands.  While we were all hopeful, I personally felt it would be more likely to meet the elusive panda that roamed wild in the reserve than to find the object of our search.  In my mind, C. farreri had assumed almost the status of a myth.  Did it still exist?  Or had it gone the way of the dodo?

            Our driver left us in what seemed like the middle of nowhere.  The forest rose up on one side.  On the other, foothills climbed sharply to a more distant backdrop of high mountains.  We were at about 10,000 feet, and if I had been smart, I would have packed oxygen in addition to lunch.  Both the scenery and the altitude were breathtaking.

            We quickly found orchids, many of them Cypripediums, with their characteristic slipper-like flower.  Canada has seven species of Cypripedium, including the well-known Pink Moccasin Flower and the gorgeous Showy Lady’s Slipper.  China, the heartland of the genus, has 32, 70% of the world’s total.  In sunny patches we stepped carefully among scattered clusters of purple C. tibeticum, as big as a pigeon’s egg; the beguiling, near-black C. calcicolum; and in one place, a delightful group of tiny yellow C. bardolphianum. There were other kinds of orchids, too, Epipactis, Coeloglossum, and Galearis.  However, the legendary farreri, we all knew, would not be so forthcoming.  As the day wore on, clouds gathered ominously, obscuring the mountaintops, and it began to rain.

            Suddenly, we heard our leader’s distant shout.  A minute later Holger came galloping toward us down a path.  “Farreri!  I have found it!”  Word spread quickly.  The forest rang with shouts of “A find!  Farreri!” and orchid hunters began emerging from the trees.

            That’s when the hard work began.  The way to farreri took us a couple of wet kilometers up into a cleft in the mountains and over moraine with boulders as big as SUVs. Where the cleft ended in a cul-de-sac ringed with high cliffs, we spotted a trio of small, light colored dots growing inaccessibly midway up the cliff face.  Then came the near-vertical assault.  Clutching our cameras with one hand, we clung with the other to whatever supports we could find to bring us within focal range of our quarry. 

            C. farreri was worth it.  A stunning, creamy yellow flower with strong striping and an unusual, dentated, red-tinged lip, it was the fulfillment of an orchid hunter’s dream.  A writer of mysteries, little did I suspect when I set out on this orchid odyssey that I would be part of the solving of a real botanical mystery:  the rediscovery of a “lost” orchid.   To our knowledge, Tim and I are the only Canadians to have seen C. farreri in the wild, and two of a handful of people in the world to have photographed it in its natural habitat.  But as Holger impressed upon us, the resurrection of the flower is a two-edged sword.  On one side are the interests of botanical science and the need to learn more about the species to ensure its protection and survival.  On the other, the immediate economic needs of locals willing to supply eager international buyers with rare plants, no questions asked.  No doubt C. farreri’s inaccessibility has played a big role in enabling the few remaining representatives of this shy and beautiful orchid to survive.  And then there is nature.  The recent earthquakes and aftershocks that have devastated Sichuan may also have destroyed the growing sites of the orchids we were so lucky to find.  At this time we have no knowledge of the fate of the rare trio of C. farreri.  We can only hope that as nature destroys, it also gives, and that some remnant of this beautiful orchid remains to bloom another day.  

 

 

Photo credits (Cypripedium farreri and Cypripedium wardii):  Tim Johnson