Commemoration of Darwin's Work On Orchids
Kent Wildlife Trust manages Downe Bank, which is near Down House and was a favourite place of the Darwin family, who called it 'Orchis Bank' because of the many wild orchids which grew there. It is now part of the 'Downe Bank and High Elms' Site of Special Scientific Interest. Darwin's observations of local orchids and their insect pollinators gave him the evidence for co-evolution which provided the basis for the Fertilisation of Orchids." Experts have identified "Orchis Bank" as the species-rich setting encapsulated in the closing paragraph of On the Origin of Species, in which Darwin wrote:
It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.Darwin's home and its surroundings, including specifically "Orchis Bank", have been called his landscape laboratory, and together were nominated in January 2009 for designation as a World Heritage Site. The bid was made by a partnership led by the London Borough of Bromley, which now includes Downe. It was included in the 39 proposed properties, but was not in the 21 new sites selected for the list.
The influence of Darwin's work was commemorated in the Smithsonian Institution's 15th Annual Orchid Show, Orchids Through Darwin's Eyes, 24 January to 26 April 2009.
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