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)

Twenty-ninth Orchid of the Season and Others

Chamisso's Orchid, Platanthera chorisiana, is one of our smallest native orchids and very hard to find.  In our area these grow in a boggy area among the sedges and at the edge of the bushes and shrubs.  Both plant and flowers are the same green as the grasses and sedges, too.  When I went to visit them they were finished blooming and so I've also included an older photo of the species.  They were 15 cm tall or less and the tiny flowers are less than 1 cm and do not open widely.  It grows at high elevations or northern latitudes.

Platanthera chorisiana

Growing in the same area were the Sierra Rein Orchis, Platanthera dilatata var. lecostachys, the Slender Bog Orchis, Platanthera stricta, and the Hooded Ladies'-tresses, Spiranthes romanzoffiana.  All of these were nearing the end of their blooming season as well, especially Platanthera stricta.  All of these plants like wet areas and sedge mat where they were found is always wet, but even there they were earlier than normal, due to an early spring, little snowfall in the mountains, and a hot dry summer.

Platanthera dilatata var. leucostachys

Platanthera stricta

Platanthera dilatata var. leucostachys and Platanthera stricta

Spiranthes romanzoffiana

Fourteenth Orchid of the Season

Platanthera stricta, the Slender Bog Orchis, is probably the most common orchid species in the Pacific Northwest and also the least attractive.  The plants can be over 100 cm tall with many flowers, but the flowers are small and green.  We find it in the ditches along the roads, sometimes in the thousands and very often do not stop to photograph them.  These were the first of the season and were photographed along the Spaudling Trail near Juneau.  There, too, they were in a wet meadow and seemed to be everywhere.  The species is readily identifiable by its long narrow lip and inflated spur, which sometimes looks like a tube with a ball on the end.

Platanthera stricta

This is, in my opinion, the least attractive of all our native orchids.  It is very common, has tiny green flowers and would pass unnoticed in most cases.  It is found along almost every mountain roadside in wet and boggy areas and apparently interbreeds rather freely with the other green Platantheras and even with the white-flowered Platantheras.  Platanthera stricta, the Slender Bog Orchis, grows to 100 cm or taller, but can be much shorter, can have 50 or more flowers on a spike, but the flowers are 2 cm or less in size and the same green color as the rest of the plant.  It can be identified by its narrow lip and the shape of the spur or nectary, which is scrotiform, that is, has a inflated or bulbous tip.  The spur is always shorter than the lip as well.

July 24

(South Cascades)

July 31

(North Cascades)

Nineteenth and Twentieth Weeks, the Last Weeks of the Native Orchid Season - Bog Orchids and Ladies'-tresses

August 11-24

There will still be a few things blooming in the weeks to come at higher elevations, some Piperias, especially Piperia elongata, as well as some Spiranthes romanzoffiana, but these weeks are going to be the last that I mark with a post.  The two orchids featured were found at Mount Rainier National Park.  We spent several days there and found only these still blooming and these at the highest elevations.

The showiest of the two is Spiranthes romanzoffiana, the Hooded Ladies'-tresses.  We found them at several locations along the Longmire to Paradise Road and exactly where we would have expected to find them, in damp open meadows.  Interestingly, the Spiranthes we found near Paradise at 5400 feet elevation (1645 meters) were very tiny plants, only a couple of inches tall, blooming with Bog Gentians.

We found the other orchid, the Slender Bog Orchis, Platanthera stricta, in the wettest ditches along the way.  This very common orchid is not very showy, perhaps the least so of all our native orchids and probably goes unnoticed by most.  These were still in relatively good shape at the higher elevations where we found them and we said goodbye to the native orchid season with them and with a few photographs.