Lady’s Slipper and Bees - Pressed Orchids and their collectors

What do bees and lady’s slippers have in common?They are the common names of some of the pressed orchids from the 1800s currently on display at Cliffe Castle!Explore a selection of Bradford District Museums & Galleries’ rare and extinct orchid specimens.These pressed flowers a part of the nationally important herbarium held at Cliffe Castle, which contains over 60,0000 specimens collected by Leeds-born botanists F.

A.

Lees (1847- 1921) and W.

A.

Sledge (1904 -1991).

The display explores local collectors and how the specimens collected during the Orchidomania, the Victorian plant-collecting craze, are now being used around the world in plant conservation research.