What Is It?

Here's another arresting sight from yesterday's walk. I came across this peculiarly ugly bench on a section of the North Downs Way, and stared at it for some while, trying to work out what, if anything, it is supposed to represent – some kind of science-fiction creature perhaps? In the end I concluded, tentatively, that it's meant to be an orchid – the North Downs are justly famed for their wild orchids – but it looks like no English orchid I know of. If that is indeed what it's meant to be, it graphically demonstrates two things: that orchids don't scale up at all well (nor do butterflies: elsewhere on the North Downs Way there's a dreadful giant Adonis Blue), and that there's something about long-distance footpaths that brings out the worst in woodcarvers.