In June we visited Michigan to see family and friends there. While in Michigan we went with one of our sons and his wife for a two day drive along the Michigan shore of Lake Huron. While driving some of the back roads and doing some hiking we were excited to see the Large Yellow Lady's Slipper in several different locations. We had not seen many orchids yet because of the covid outbreak and so were thankful that we could add these to our list of orchids for 2020.
I went on a two-day orchid hunting trip and visited nine different locations. I found orchids at all but two of the locations and it was very late in the season for the orchid I expected to find there. These are the results of that two-day search for our native orchids.
At the first location I found the Eastern Fairy Slipper and its natural hybrid with the Western Fairy Slipper, Kostiuk's Hybrid Fairy Slipper. The Fairy Slippers were very sparse this year and the area they were in had suffered from a windstorm that left numerous blowdowns and blocked trails.
At the second location that had orchids I checked on a mixed population of Lady's Slippers. There are that resemble the Mountain Lady's Slipper, flowers that resemble the Northern Yellow Lady's Slipper and flowers that are clearly hybrids of the two in that population.
At the third location I found the Mountain Lady's Slipper and the Spotted Coralroot. The Spotted Coralroots were all the round-lipped variety, but included numerous yellow-stemmed plants. This usually rare form is more numerous than the normal form in this location.
At a fourth location there was another orchid I looked for but didn't find. I did find more Western Spotted Coralroot, though far fewer than previous years. The weather has been unusual and the Coralroots especially seem to have been affected, with fewer plants everywhere.
