Two pale stems rise from bare earth between stones and hedge roots at the edge of the path. The stems are partially cowled with scales and have clubbed heads that are tightly clenched flower buds. This apparition is about to become something but I don't know what. I want it to be bird's-nest orchid but I'm uncertain, and that makes the thing mysterious. With no chlorophyll to make its own nutrients, bird's-nest orchid steals them, with the aid of conspiratorial fungi, from the roots of other plants. In this case it may be feeding on the roots of the hazel leafing above.
It has reached the moment of appearance, thrusting itself into shadows to blossom without need of light. This is a ghostly flower with an uncanny beauty. I have been looking at Victorian photographs of ghosts: a series of studio-staged double exposures of people in the woods frightened by transparent spectres, entitled The Phenomenon of Materialisation. In this wood the ghostly orchid is a materialisation: an unexpected appearance, hard to comprehend with an existence so ephemeral compared with our own; it may as well be made from ectoplasm.
This plant is wonderfully weird and appeals to that fascination for the macabre. And yet this time of year is full of the phenomena of materialisation; it's not about death but about life. Things appear, as if from nowhere, wonderful and strange. One minute the space where sky meets land is the same edgy line it's been all year; the next, there are swallows skimming through it across the hill. They materialised and now everything is different. Then something happens that is much more like the materialisation of a ghost. A cuckoo calls. From woods below, ringing invisibly, the sound produces the shock of joy.
(Twitter: @DrPaulEvans1)
