An Alien Species in Larrabee State Park

Friday, August 5, I visited Larrabee State Park south of Bellingham to see how the Broad-leaved Helleborines were doing.  Due, I suspect, to the dry summer we've had some were already finished and others were just starting to bloom and in one location there were very few to found, though they are usually abundant in that location.  Epipactis is not a New World native but comes from Europe.  It has, however, established itself across the USA and Canada.  Here are the photos I was able to take. 

Thirtieth Orchid of the Season

The Broad-leaved Helleborine, Epipactis helleborine, is not a native but a European transplant that is well established here.  We saw it, though not yet blooming, in Olympic National Park, and these photos were taken shortly after in the Chuckanut Mountains south of Bellingham.  There is considerable color variation in the flowers and these show some of that variation, ranging from deep purple to green.  There were fewer plants than usual and most of them were also shorter than usual.  On some plants the flowers had never opened but simply dried up, due I'm sure to the lack of rain and the excessive heat of the past few months.  We've seen plants as tall as 90 cm but the tallest of these plants were only 60 cm.  The individual flowers were 1-3 cm across.

Epipactis helleborine

This is our only "native" orchid that isn't a native.  It is a European import that has been spreading across the northern United States and southern Canada since the late 1800's.  Here in Washington it is found especially in the western and especially the coastal areas of the state.  It is also variable in size and color, the plants ranging from 30-90 cm and flowers from a plain green to a deep pink or purple.  There are even yellow and albino forms of the species to be found but we have not seen them, though we've looked.

I visited a number of locations this summer to see and photograph the species and found plenty of them, but in some locations, especially the first, they were suffering from a very dry summer and the plants were deformed, the flowers very crowded, and many of the flowers dried up and withered.  In that first set of pictures the last photo is of the green-flowered form, fma. viridis.

July 31

(Seattle Area)

August 6

(Larrabee State park)

August 8

(Larrabee State Park)