1 A woodland wonder

该页暂无翻译

Chapter One A WOODLAND WONDER "No WAY!" Leah gasped. She couldn't believe her eyes. This was like finding a fairy at the edge of your backyard, only better. She leaned her bike gently against a beech tree. As she walked across the woodland clearing, she kept her gaze fixed on the tiny plant she'd spotted. The closer

she got, the more excited she became. She was looking at a ghost orchid! Leah had seen pictures of ghost orchids on the internet and in books, but she'd never thought she would ever see a real one. And she'd definitely never thought she would see one growing so close to her home in Oxfordshire, in the south of England. Ghost orchids were incredibly rare and endangered. In fact, they were so hard to find in her country that people had thought they were extinct.

She would have to keep the plant's location a secret, so it didn't get dug up and stolen. Leah didn't mind. After all, she already had another big secret, which none of her friends or family even suspected… She knelt down next to the ghost orchid. It was white and delicate. No wonder it's called a ghost orchid, she thought. Unlike so many other plants, it had no green in it. Leah was an expert on plants, so she knew what that meant. Green plants contained chlorophyll, the substance that turned sunlight into the energy they needed to grow. But the little ghost orchid got its energy in quite a different way. It sucked up nutrition from the rotting vegetation

beneath it, and from the fungi growing on the beech tree roots. That was why ghost orchids always grew in shady places. "So cool," Leah whispered. This was the luckiest find of her life. Ghost orchids weren't just rare—they spent most of their lives underground. Some of them only sent up a flower every ten years! Leah knew it was almost a miracle that she had happened to see this one.

But it was time to check on her own plants. Leah had a greenhouse full of them at home, and they all needed care and attention. She cycled home as fast as she could, still feeling excited about finding the ghost orchid. She skidded to a halt outside the greenhouse. As she reached for the door, she stopped in her tracks. Glowing on the glass was a compass symbol.