Attempts to put one of the world's rarest orchids on display at the Chelsea Flower Show have been scuppered by Customs officials.

Four ghost orchids from the Cayman Islands were on their way to Chelsea when they were intercepted in the Netherlands.

They had been destined for a display celebrating the colour and diversity of Cayman Island plants but fell foul of new European regulations restricting the trade of rare and endangered species of plants and animals.

A small consignment of banana orchids, the national flower of the Cayman Islands, was also seized before it could complete its journey to Britain.

It would have been the first time that the ghost orchid was displayed at Chelsea and it is believed it would also have been its first showing in Britain. Ben de Lisi, one of Britain's leading fashion designers, has created a dress for the show, inspired by the flower.

Organisers of the Cayman Islands' Heritage Garden had sought special permission to take specimens of the ghost and banana orchids out of the country. Neither is found naturally anywhere else. An export licence was granted by the Cayman authorities but the rare plants now require an import licence under European rules. Dutch Customs officials ordered the plants be impounded in the absence of suitable paperwork and the orchids are now expected to end up in a botanic garden in the Netherlands.

“We are all very upset,” said Andrew Guthrie, manager of the Queen Elizabeth II Botanic Park in the Cayman Islands. “We'd intended to make them part of our display but now we can't. It would have been the icing on the cake to have the orchid here but the plants are in limbo at the moment.”

There are estimated to be little more than 1,000 of the ghost orchids, Dendrophylax fawcettii, left in the wild. The small, white, parasitic flower was due to have been part of a tour yesterday by the Queen, who opened the botanic park in Grand Cayman in 1994. The species is found only on Grand Cayman in and around the island's capital, Georgetown. The flowers have been hit particularly badly by the devastation caused by Hurricane Ivan in 2004.

Their survival is further threatened because it is thought the plant's natural pollinator, probably a moth with an extra-long proboscis, is extinct.

The ghost orchids, also known as Fawcett's dendrophylax, have avoided extinction because they can reproduce asexually and gardeners are able to pollinate them by hand.

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