Photo: Maria José Valera Jiménez | Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA-4.0
Giant orchids, growing wild in UK for first time, were discovered near Didcot, Oxfordshire, by Hamza Nobes, a trainee nurse, while on a walk near his home. I was ecstatic, said Nobes, who has been interested in orchids for two years. I've never really found anything, and I'm not a botanist. The plant has been expanding north from the Mediterranean with climate change. In the Didcot area, there are 19 plants in total, reaching a maximum height of 30 cm. Sean Cole, co-author of Britain's Orchids, welcomes the new species. It comes from the near continent, so it's kind of semi-natural to us, he said. It's not going to take over like Japanese knotweed. Early pollinators have been seen on the flowers. Our local bees have welcomed them, so then why shouldn't we?
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