May 12-18
I was away for a day and half this week hunting for native orchids and other wildflowers in the Leavenworth area. I visited three different locations and found Western Fairy Slippers and Western Spotted Coralroots at their peak in one location, Clustered Lady's Slippers at another location and Mountain Lady's Slippers at three different locations though they were not yet in bloom.
The Fairy Slippers, the Western variety in this case, Calypso bulbosa var. occidentalis, are finished at lower elevations, but are reaching their peak or just beginning to bloom at higher elevations. The location I visited has some of the nicest clumps of them I've found anywhere and I found a few paler forms as well, along with a bifoliate form (normally they only have one leaf).
The Clustered or Brownie Lady's Slipper, Cypripedium fasciculatum, is hard to find, even when one knows where to look, because it is so small. I looked for it at another location as well and did not find it there, though I plan to go back and look again. These, too, were at their peak and were blooming a little ahead of the regular blooming time, but not by much.
At the same location as Clustered Lady's Slippers I found a lot of Western Spotted Coralroot blooming, Corallorhiza maculata var. occidentalis. They showed some variation from what I had seen earlier and in other places, with a narrower lip and a different pattern of spotting. I looked for them, too, at the third location I visited but did not find them there this year.
At the same third location and at two other locations I found Mountain Lady's Slippers, but none of them were in bloom yet and at two locations they were still several weeks from blooming. I did take pictures of the flowers just beginning to open, but will have to go back to catch them blooming. It was nice to find a new location for these and I am sure there are more where I found them.
6 comments:
the super-macro of the single coralroot flower is stunning in its color and clarity
Thanks, Marti. Hope you have a good excursion and a profitable one and hope you find some real treasures, though in our eyes everything we find is a treasure.
Muito lido.
Obrigada por compartilhar
abraços e um bom domingo
Appreciate your kind comments, Elisabete. All the best to you.
Again, stunning images, Ron! That third image of Corallorhiza maculata looks to me to be C. maculata var. maculata, since it has almost parallel sides to the lip. I'm certainly not an expert on these plants, but that is one of the defining features of C. maculata var. maculata. In any case, wonderful plants!
Jim Fowler, Greenville, SC
When you see as many Corallorhizas as we do, Jim, you realize that it's not as easy to distinguish them as the literature would make you believe. There are often flowers with rounded lips and flowers with parallel lips on the same plant and plants that appear to be intermediate. I believe that the literature is correct in distinguishing two varieties but they are more easily distinguishable by bloom time (when blooming in the same area) than in any other way. I guess what it all comes down to is that species is highly variable and is more of a complex than a group of clearly distinguishable varieties.
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