Three Orchids on Whidbey and Fidalgo Islands

Monday, April 11, we went to Whidbey and Fidalgo Islands (both driveable) to look for orchids and spring wildflowers.  We found more Western Fairy Slippers and in some locations found them near the end of their bloom season.  Among them we found two white flowers and we found two other orchids.  The Western Heart-leaved Twayblade we found at one location where we had found it before, but only two plants and both the reddish form of the species.  We usually find this species blooming later in abundance in the mountains, but this location is near the coast and near sea level.  We also found the Western Spotted Coralroots beginning to bloom at two locations.

Western Fairy Slipper

Calypso bulbosa var. occidentalis

a very pale form and a flower that is pollinated and finished

White Western Fairy Slipper

Calypso bulbosa var. occidentalis fma. nivea

Western Heart-leaved Twayblade

Neottia cordata var. nephrophylla fma. rubescens

Western Spotted Coralroot 

Corallorhiza maculata var. occidentalis

Western Fairy Slippers near Mount Hood

We were in the area of Mount Hood doing some hiking and sight-seeing and found a few Western Fairy Slippers on one of the hikes.  They appeared to be just starting to bloom there at lower elevations and there were not many of them.  The Western Fairy Slipper, as we've noted before, is found only west of the Rockies and especially in the Cascades of Washington, Oregon and California.  Its mahogany lip markings and white beard are distinctive.

Western Fairy Slippers on Fidalgo Island

Here's the first orchids of the season.  We were out Thursday, March 24, to a number of different sites on Fidalgo Island, looking for spring wildflowers and for the first Fairy Slippers of the season.  We suspected before we went that they would be blooming since we had seen some of them in bud a couple of weeks earlier and our suspicions were confirmed.  We found them just starting to bloom and even found one white Fairy Slipper among them.

Calypso bulbosa var. occidentalis

(Western Fairy Slipper)

Calypso bulbosa var. occidentalis fma. nivea

(Western Fairy Slipper, white form)

The End of Another Season (2015)

What a strange season this was!  The season began earlier than ever before with the first Fairy Slippers blooming in March and ended nearly a month early with nearly everything finished blooming by the beginning of August.  We had almost no snow in the mountains last winter, a very early and warm spring, followed by a summer that was hot and dry like none we've ever had before.

The orchids, except at higher elevations were almost all very few in number and were often blooming poorly as well.  We saw a lot of aphids, usually a sign of excessive dryness, and in some cases, especially with the Spiranthes, there were sites where the plants had apparently gone completely dormant.  We hope at least that they are dormant and not gone forever.

In spite of the many disappointments there were a few highlights.  We saw for the first time the natural hybrid of the two varieties of Calypso bulbosa, Calypso bulbosa x kostiukiae.  We had looked for this for several years and finally found it.  It's a hybrid of the Eastern and Western Fairy Slippers, variety americana and var. occidentalis and though it has features of both is very different from either.

We also saw for the first time the albino (alba) form of the Mountain Lady's Slipper, Cypripedium montanum fma. praetertinctum (that last word means "without color").  We had looked for this also many times before but found it in a location where we had looked and where, at least at that time, it was not growing.  We found only a few plants but at least we found it.

One other highlight was that with the help of a good friends we now have locations for some of the native orchids we have not seen in the state of Washington.  We've seen them elsewhere, but not at home.  We hope there will be opportunity to see them next season and to finish seeing all the native orchids of Washington within the state.  These are some of them.

Coeloglossum (Dactylorhiza) viride var. virescens

Platanthera obtusata var. obtusata

Listera (Neottia) borealis