The Guardian2 Jun 2026Macro
Automatically composed with AI from the cited sources
A garden count this year reached 27 common spotted orchids, up from 16 spikes in the previous year, in an area left un-mown after a move to a property with too large a lawn for the available mower. The plants depend on a mutualistic relationship with mycorrhizal fungi: microscopic seeds lacking food reserves require a fungus to infect the embryo and supply nutrients, a process that enlarges into a globular underground root that may take several years to gather enough energy before a shoot appears.