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)

Thirteenth Orchid of the Season

One of our ferry stops on the way to Alaska was in Juneau where we were delayed for over eight hours.  We used the time to hike the Spaulding trail and the Auke Nu trail just south of the ferry terminal and found two native orchids along the trail, the Green Bog Orchis, Platanthera huronensis, featured in another post, and the Tall White Northern Bog Orchis, Platanthera dilatata var. dilatata.  The latter species grows all over the Pacific Northwest but is always a treat to see.  It is also strongly scented and is a delight for that reason also.  There are three varieties of this species distinguished by the length of the spur.  This variety has a spur that equals the length of the lip.  This was our first sighting of the species but we expect to see many more of them before the summer is over and hope to see the other varieties as well.

Platanthera dilatata var. dilatata

Platanthera dilatata is one of our most common native orchids, but none-the-less beautiful for that.  Its flowers are not only pure white but intensely fragrant, perfuming a whole area on a warm summer day.  Its common reflects the fact that it is always found in wet areas, often with its feet in shallow running water. For that reason, too, it is often found in roadside ditches.  There are three varieties distinguished by the length of the spur.  This variety, Platanthera dilatata var. dilata, has a spur that is more or less equal to the length of the lip.  The other varieties, less common than this, have longer or shorter spurs.

June 23
(Blewett Pass)

June 24
(Blewett Pass)

July 7
(Canadian Rockies)

 July 9
(Canadian Rockies)