However in Norfolk the last bog orchid has now been stolen

However, in Norfolk, the last bog orchid has now been stolen. “The worst-hit counties are losing one species a year,” he said.English Nature’s Jill Sutcliffe said: “People are taking plants for profit, as though there’s no cost to the environment. Every plant supports other wildlife, and helps to make every part of the UK different.”Winter aconite, Eranthis hyemalisOne of the most poisonous plants in cultivation. In 1822, it accounted for the death of a woman who used it to make horseradish sauce.Common snowdrop, Galanthus nivalisNot native to Britain, the snowdrop comes from eastern Europe, and was very fashionable with Victorian plant hunters.Bluebell,Hyacinthoides non-scriptaNative to north-western Europe and found in hedge-banks and woodlands.

Although it is poisonous, the Elizabethans took starch from its bulbs to glue books together.Sphagnum moss,Sphagnum cymbifoliumKnown as bog moss, this soft, thick plant is found in wet, boggy areasand is well known for its medicinal properties as a wound dressing and, with garlic, as an antiseptic.Military orchid,Orchis militarisNamed because its “lateral lobes” look like a soldier’s arms, with its spotted body like a buttoned tunic Once thought extinct, it is now being carefully conserved. Habitats need saving as much as the plants themselves We have a pathetically small tally of native plants in this country So, if one is threatened with extinction, we take it hard And quite right, too. I’d go to the barricades for the soldier orchid, Orchis militaris. Late one May, my mother led me to see one on the South Downs. I was only eight, but I understood this was a pilgrimage; her reverence for plants was as close as she ever got to religion. Me too.But do I feel the same when the SOS message goes out – Save our Snowdrops? No, not quite. Like all bulbs, snowdrops can reproduce themselves in two ways.

They bulk up underground by making small bulblets or offsets, and they also set vast quantities of seed So they double their chances of survival. The soldier orchid has a fiendishly complicated sex life and has always been a rare native.And there’s another difference: the snowdrop isn’t native, though in various areas of the country it has become naturalised Its real home is further east, in Europe. In Herball (1597) John Gerard talks of it as a garden novelty, “the timely flowering Bulbous Violet”. “Wild” snowdrops were first recorded in the 1770s in Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, first planted out and then naturalised in light woodland.The winter aconite Eranthis hyemalis, which now spreads in the light sandy soils of East Anglia, arrived here in the 16th century.

So why, I ask myself rebelliously, do the eco-warriors tell us we must fight for these immigrants, but seek out and destroy others? I’m thinking of the beautiful giant hogweed, Heracleum mantegazzianum. “Poisonous”, people tell you with horror, as though it will drown you in its irritant sap. But snowdrops and aconites have irritant sap, too – and are poisonous if eaten.Protecting habitats is the key to protecting plants. Yes, we can keep a plant alive in a botanic garden, but it’s no good “saving” an orchid if it hasn’t got a proper home to go to.Anna Pavord. Genetically modified crops specially engineered to kill pests in fact nourish them, startling new research has revealed. And it suggests that they may be an even greater threat to organic farming than has been envisaged.It strikes at the heart of one of the main lines of current genetic engineering in agriculture: breeding crops that come equipped with their own pesticide.Biotech companies have added genes from a naturally occurring poison, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), which is widely used as a pesticide by organic farmers The engineered crops have spread fast. The amount of land planted with them worldwide grew more than 25-fold – from four million acres in 1996 to well over 100 million acres (44.2m hectares) in 2000 – and the global market is expected to be worth $25bn (£16bn) by 2010.Drawbacks have already emerged, with pests becoming resistant to the toxin.