"In June 2000, Francis Rose and I visited the Waveney Valley on the Norfolk-Suffolk border, where almost 40 years earlier he had worked with David Bellamy on the definitive paper on the plant ecology of the fens of the area. As we stood looking over the remnants of the fen flora, Francis recounted how, as a teenager in the 1930s, he had taken his bike up to the furthest north part of the London Underground and then cycled through the lanes of Essex and Suffolk to search these wetlands for the elusive Fen Orchid."