First Week of the Native Orchid Season - Fairy Slippers

April 7-13

Finally!  Actually they are two to three weeks early, but the Fairy Slippers are blooming at lower elevations here in western Washington.  I visited Washington Park and Sharpe Park in the Anacortes area on Fidalgo Island Thursday and found them already at their peak.  The earliest date I have for them is April 18th and at that point they were just starting to bloom, but we have found them as late as May 25 if spring weather is delayed.  In any case, it was wonderful to see them.

As I have noted in previous posts these are the Western Fairy Slipper, Calypso bulbosa var. occidentalis, distinguished from the much more common and wide-spread eastern variety by the white (rather than yellow) "beard" and by the brown markings on the mid-lobe (outer end) of the lip.  It is not quite as showy as the eastern variety, but very elegant and beautiful in its own way.  We hope to see the eastern variety later this month on another excursion to eastern Washington.

 

One additional note.  Last year we found a white Fairy Slipper in Washington Park.  I looked for it again and discovered that some blankety-blank had dug it up, probably last fall.  The hole they left was still there.  I cannot understand that someone who knows what they were seeing would be so thoughtless and stupid as to take something so beautiful and valuable for their own private use and probably kill it in the process.  I just hope that my post last year was not their motivation.

Fairy Slippers and Western Coralroots in Washington Park

 
We have made three or four trips already this year to Washington Park.  It is an hour and a half from where we live near the town of Anacortes and the San Juan Ferries, and is one of our favorite places for wildflowers, for the Madrone trees, for bird-watching and for native orchids.  It is just simply the perfect place for a walk, for photography, and for exploring.

We had already made several trips but went again to see a white Fairy Slipper (Calypso bulbosa var. occidentalis fma. nivea) that had been reported by a friend.  We not only found it but found other Fairy Slippers still blooming as well, though many had been pollinated and were turning white, and we found, for the first time, the Western Coralroot (Corallorhiza mertensiana) blooming there.

The day we went, Thursday, May 3, was rainy, cold and windy, not the best weather for photographs.  We managed to get good photos of the Fairy Slippers which were somewhat protected, but I did not get any good pictures of the Western Coralroots.  All the pictures of them that I am posting here were taken by my wife, who somehow managed to get very good photos in spite of the wind.

Western Fairy Slippers in Washington Park

On Friday, April 20, we took the afternoon and evening off and went to Washington Park near Anacortes, one of our favorite places.  We went to see the Fairy Slippers, expecting that they would be just starting bloom on account of our long cold and wet spring.  We found them at their peak with some of them already starting to go by.  We did not go only to see them, but to see the Oregon Fawn Lilies (Erythronium oregonum), the Few-flowered Shooting Stars (Dodecatheon pulchellum), and other wild flowers which bloom on the cliffs of this beautiful park.  The Fairy Slippers are the main attraction, though, and spring would not be the same without the opportunity to see them.

We saw the other wildflowers in abundance - the Fawn Lilies nearing the end of their brief blooming season, and the Shooting Stars by the thousands at Green Point, but we had come to see the Fairy Slippers and spent most of our time looking for them and photographing them, often lying on the ground or being discovered in some other strange position when others came past.  The Fairy Slippers on this side of the mountains are all the rarer Western variety with a white rather than a yellow beard, Calypso bulbosa var. occidentalis.  We usually found them scattered as single flowers, but in one location found clumps of three to five of them.

Note: for more pictures of the park and its wildflowers, see the following blog posts:
http://ronaldhanko-orchidhunter.blogspot.com/2011/07/washington-park.html
http://ronaldhanko-orchidhunter.blogspot.com/2011/05/washington-park-again.html
http://ronaldhanko-orchidhunter.blogspot.com/2011/04/first-native-orchids-of-year.html
http://ronaldhanko-orchidhunter.blogspot.com/2011/04/washington-park-anacortes.html

Platanthera transversa at Washington Park

On a previous outing to Washington Park in the spring we had seen the glossy leaves of a Platanthera growing along the trails.  It was tentatively identified at that time as Platanthera ephemerantha (Slender White Piperia).  I made a mental note of the locations and determined that I would go back later in the summer to see the plants in flower.

I finally made the trip on July 18th and found the plants but discovered that they were not Platanthera ephemerantha, but Platanthera transversa, the Flat-spurred Piperia, a species I had not seen before.  The leaves were gone now, as is common with the Piperias, but there were many more plants than I remembered, all in flower.

It was quite a windy day, but I was able to get some decent photos both of the plants and of their habitat.  They were growing in rather bright, dry, but mossy areas with a light tree cover and their white and green flowers made then very visible, though their spikes were less than a foot tall, and the flowers quite tiny.

Calypso bulbosa in Washington Park

I've posted a fairly detailed description of this species and its varieties previously: http://nativeorchidsofthepacificnorthwest.blogspot.com/2010/07/calypso-bulbosa.html.  I'd promised myself, however, that this year I would concentrate on getting pictures not only of the native orchids themselves, but of their habitats and here's the first post by way of keeping that resolve.

Calypso bulbosa, the Fairy Slipper, is the first of our native orchids to bloom, and if one looks in the right places it can be found in abundance.  This year I've been to Washington Park on Fidalgo Island, west of the town of Anacortes, Washington, three times to see it, though the first time I went I was a bit early and found only a single flower in bloom.

This is the variety found only west of the of the Rockies and in the North Cascades, C. bulbosa var. occidentalis, the Western Fairy Slipper.  It is easily distinguished from the eastern variety, also found here in Washington, by the white rather than yellow beard and by the brown spotting on the lip.  These differences can be seen in my previous post.

Some different views of the flowers first.  The whitish flower is either not fully open or is well past its prime, probably the latter, since most of those that I saw this color were closing and setting seed.  I keep hoping to find the very rare white (alba) form of the species, which has none of the purple or brown color at all, but all I find are these. 

As for its habitat, it seems to prefer fairly bright locations under the trees or along the roadsides where there is plenty of moss, good drainage, and  relatively flat ground.  It generally does not grow in large clumps, but in scattered groups where its requirements are met, seldom more than a few flowers close enough to get them into a picture.