Two Platantheras Near Home

This year was an especially good year for wildflowers and orchids in our area due to a longer, cooler and wetter spring.  The last while I found several Piperias (now Platanthera) near our home, an especially nice find since we have had little opportunity to do any orchid hunting the past couple years.  One of the species, Piperia or Platanthera elongata, the Long-spurred Piperia, I had seen before, but this year I found it in five or six different locations within two miles of our home.  The other species, Piperia or Platanthera elegans, the Elegant Piperia, I had not seen before in our area and was thrilled to find one lonely stem.  Here are the photos.

Piperia elegans, Elegant Piperia

Piperia elongata, Long-spurred Piperia

The Colorado Rockies

 
Both in 2020 and 2021 the brother next to me and I backpacked in the Rocky Mountains west of Aspen, Colorado.  Last year we did part of the Four Passes Loop in the Maroon Bells.  This year we hiked to Cathedral Lake and Electric Pass and this year we each took a grandson along.  Neither trip was for the purpose of seeing native orchids but we did see a few, all of them familiar to me from the Pacific Northwest.

Platanthera dilatata var dilatata (Tall White Northern Bog Orchid)

Platanthera huronensis (Green Bog Orchis)

Platanthera x estesii (Estes Hybrid Rein Orchis)

Goodyera oblongifolia (Giant Rattlesnake Orchis)

The Olympics

 

 July14-16 we were in Olympic National Park for some hiking and sightseeing.  We visited a number of our favorite places including Ruby Beach, the Hoh Rainforest, Hurricane Ridge, Lake Crescent and Deer Park.  We did one shorter hike along the Hoh River and one longer hike along Lillian Ridge and down to Grant Lake.  It was not meant to be an orchid-hunting trip but we did find a number of orchids which I've posted here.

Epipactis gigantea (Chatterbox or Stream Orchid)

 

Piperia (Platanthera) elegans (Elegant Piperia)

Neottia banksiana (Northwestern Twayblade)

Piperia (Platanthera) unalascensis (Alaskan Piperia)

Platanthera dilatata var. dilatata (Tall White Northern Bog Orchis)

Platanthera dilatata var. leucostachys (Sierra Rein Orchis)

Heliotrope Ridge

 

2020 has not been a good year for native orchids, mostly because of covid.  We have not been able to do the hiking we usually do and many of our hikes have been in areas that were not shut down but had few or no native orchids.  We did manage a hike in the North Cascades to Heliotrope Ridge near Mount Baker but saw only three orchids, a Twayblade, which we saw along the trail and two Platantheras, which we saw at the traihead in a boggy area.

 

Neottia cordata var. nephrophylla (Western Heart-leaved Twayblade)

Platanthera stricta (Slender Bog Orchis)

Platanthera dilatata var. dilatata (White Bog Orchis)

Orchids at Annette Lake

Our final orchid trip for the year was Annette Lake where we stopped to look for Platanthera orbiculata, the Pad-leaved Orchis.  Annette Lake is one of the few locations we know for this striking orchid.  We found a few plants, fewer than we had seen on previous visits and those we saw were not yet in bloom.  We also saw a few other orchids.

Platanthera orbiculata (Pad-leaved Orchis

Corallorhiza mertensiana (Western Coralroot)

 

 Neottia banksiana (Northwestern Twayblade)

 

Neottia cordata var. nephrophylla (Heart-leaved Twayblade)

Platanthera stricta (Slender Bog Orchid)

Finally Platanthera obtusta in Washington

Platanthera obtusata, the Blunt-leaved Rein Orchis, is very common in the Canadian Rockies and further north and we've seen it often, so often that we do not usually stop to photograph it.  It was, however, one of only two orchids native to Washington that we had not seen in the state.

We'd been given several sets of GPS coordinates by a friend and finally found the species in the Okanogan Highlands in north-central Washington in two locations.  We had to do some scrambling and bushwacking to see it, but found it at peak of bloom and were delighted to add it to our list.

In both cases it was growing on the edge of a bog, about twenty plants at each location.  We did not stay long for photos since the mosquitoes were thick and biting, but got enough photos to record the find, beautiful in the photos but in fact rather small and uninspiring and easily missed.