A decades-long bid to bring back one of Britain’s “rarest and most impressive” wildflowers has seen success with the first new plant found in the wild in nearly 100 years.<br /><br />Conservationists now hope the lady’s-slipper orchid, which came close to vanishing from the English countryside, could one day be restored across its former range.<br /><br />The striking lady’s-slipper orchid was believed to be extinct in the UK by the early 20th century, due to over-collection by plant hunters gripped by the Victorian orchid craze, and loss of its habitat.<br /><br />But discovery of a single plant in a remote location in the Yorkshire Dales in 1930 prompted round-the-clock protection by decades of dedicated volunteers, and later efforts to propagate and reintroduce orchids to former haunts.<br /><br /><br />Credit: Amy Cooper
