One of the aims of the organisation Plantlife International is to enthuse people about the plants and habitats in their immediate locality. To this end Plantlife initiated a quest among interested members to designate a particular flower which, for them, was emblematic of their county. The flower chosen could be something particularly common locally, or a rarity occurring in the area.
Fife respondents have chosen the coralroot orchid, Corallorhiza trifida. This is an interesting choice. It is certainly not a showy plant, but it has a distinct mystique due to its form and lifestyle. It is a slender plant 12-20cm tall with pale yellow-green or reddish brown stem which has a few scale-like leaves of similar unhealthy colour. The typical orchid flowers are also pale green with a brownish tinge. There are no normal leaves at all, and the plant depends for its food supply on nutrients absorbed directly from decaying plant material, i.e. it is saprophytic. It has a strangely shaped rhizome which is lumpy like coral and from which it takes its name.
The species is nationally scarce and in Britain has a northern and eastern distribution with its headquarters in Scotland. It grows in pine and birch woods, alder and willow carr and, of particular interest in Fife, dune slacks containing extensive stands of the creeping willow Salix repens. It is therefore particularly characteristic of Tentsmuir, though it occurs occasionally in birch woods too. However one of its curious features is a tendency to disappear for a season and then reappear. Presumably it persists and grows underground due to its saprophytic habit, and only produces stems when conditions are just right.
Fife has obviously opted for a plant with real character and charisma, which manages to maintain an air of mystery and which never fails to give a thrill when it is found.
The flower chosen by Plantlife as the emblem for Kinross is holy grass (Hierochloe odorata). As in Fife, a very rare species has been selected: so rare that it occurs in only one locality on the fringes of Loch Leven and was discovered there as late as 1972 by one of our own members, George Ballantyne, who records it in The Flowering Plants of Kinross (1978).
The plant is easily overlooked because it flowers very early in the year. It has usually finished flowering, and become overshadowed by more rank vegetation by the end of May. The grass superficially resembles quaking grass and has a dainty, airy panicle. However quaking grass flowers much later, so any mysterious quaking grass flowering in May should be examined more closely!
The species flourishes in wet places such as willow carr fringing lakes and rivers, often in base-rich areas. It occurs in Great Britain only in a few Scottish localities but is much more common in continental Europe.
Hierochloe is thought to be quite closely related to sweet vernal grass Anthoxanthum odoratum and shares with that species a distinctive sweet smell, often described as the smell of new mown hay, which is due to the presence of the alkaloid coumarin (which is very unpleasant in its effects: not to be chewed). In mediaeval times in continental Europe it was used as a strewing herb in the doorways of churches and this is the reason for its name. It is interesting that its botanical generic name is a straight Greek translation of ‘holy grass’. In many parts of Europe it is linked with the Virgin Mary and the plant was probably widely associated with religious buildings. It is a tantalising thought, worthy of further investigation, that there is an ancient monastery not far from its Kinross site and some other Scottish localities are also near to former religious settlements. We wonder……?