Three Orchids along the Thunder Creek Trail

Saturday, May 21, was a hike at Thunder Creek with the Washington Native Orchid Society.  We went to see the Western Fairy Slippers, Calypso bulbosa var. occidentalis, but they were all finished.  We found two Twayblades, the Northwestern Twayblade, Neottia banksiana, also known as Neottia caurina, and the Heart-leaved Twayblade, Neottia cordata var. cordata, but it was nearly finished blooming.  The star of the show was the Western or Merten's Coralroot, Corallorhiza mertensiana, which we saw in a variety of colors including some very pale forms.  Actually we saw a fourth orchid as well, the Western Spotted Coralroot, Corallorhiza maculata var. occidentalis, but we were near the end of the hike and the battery in my camera was dead, so I did not get pictures.

Northwestern Twayblade

Neottia banksiana (caurina)

Heart-leaved Twayblade

Neottia cordata var. cordata

Western Coralroot

Corallorhiza mertensiana

Western Coralroot (pale form)

Corallorhiza mertensiana fma. pallida

Neottias of the Pacific Northwest

The species, known until recently as Listeras, have been moved into the genus Neottia.  There are four such species in the Pacific Northwest and three additional North American species.  The four species treated in this article are Neottia banksiana, borealis, convallarioides, and cordata.  Until this past summer we had only seen three of the four species from our area, but finally found the last and rarest of them, Neottia convallarioides in the Mount Rainier area of Washington.

Neottia banksiana, the Northwestern Twayblade, is very common in our area and can be found along nearly every mountain trail in the Cascades, the Olympics and Canadian Rockies.  It is a fairly tall plant (up to 30 cm) and its height is usually the first clue to its identity (the other tend to be smaller).  The 1 cm flowers, up to 15 per stem, are not showy but with the darker markings on the lip are attractive especially when seen close up.

Neottia borealis, the Northern Twayblade, reaches only 20 cm in height and is usually smaller, lives up to its name.  It becomes more common the further north one goes.  It is found into Montana, Idaho and Washington but is very rare that far south.  It has up to 15 flowers per spike and the flowers are a pale watery green that looks translucent in good light.  Like the other species it size and the color of the flowers mean that it usually goes unnoticed.

Neottia convallarioides, the Broad-lipped Twayblade, is quite rare.  It is known, for example, from only a few locations in the state of Washington.  It seems to prefer wetter locations and where we have found it is growing near seeps and springs.  It, too, has up to 15 clear green flowers and grows to 30 cm tall, though it is usually much less than that.  Neottia banksiana is often mistaken for it, but when once seen is unmistakable in that it lacks any dark markings on the lip.

Neottia cordata, the Heart-leaved Twayblade, is another very common species.  We have seen it growing by the thousand in open mossy areas in the Cascades.  It is usually very small (15 cm or less) with as many as 25 tiny flowers that are less than 1 cm in size.  It has two varieties, and two color forms, green and reddish.  The varieties are var. cordata with narrower leaves and a shorter lip and var. nephrophylla with wider leaves and a longer lip.

Heart-leaved Twayblade (Neottia cordata)

The Heart-leaved Twayblade is a very small plant with tiny, but intricate flowers.  With a bit of imagination the flowers look like a cloud of tiny green or red insects hovering around the flower spike and above the two opposite heart-shaped leaves.

The plant is supposed to grow as tall as 40 cm, but the plants we have seen have all been tiny, less than 15 cm tall.  The flowers, said to number up to forty, have been 15 or fewer on the plants we've seen and are only about 1 cm in size.

There are two varieties of this plant, variety cordata, more common in the Eastern United States and Canada and variety nephrophylla, more common in the west.  I have not yet figured out the difference between the two, except that the first variety is very tiny.

The species and especially variety cordata is very widespread being found not only throughout the USA and Canada but also in Europe and Asia.  Variety nephrophylla, however, is found only in the western USA and Canada, from the Rockies west to California and north to Alaska.

Both varieties come in red and green forms which further complicates the situation.  One cannot tell the variety simply from the colors of the flowers.  Both are very attractive, however, though I think the red flowered form is the more appealing.

In the pictures, in both cases, the first green and red flowered flowered plants were photographed in the North Cascades and the second in the Canadian Rockies in Berg Lake Provincial Park.  In the second location the red-flowered plants were also photographed growing among the green.

The first picture is of an plant with flowers intermediate in color, perhaps the offspring of the two different color forms.  This plant was photographed in the North Cascades in Washington State along the Heliotrope Ridge Trail.