Close, But No Showies! Near Misses in a Cedar Swamp

Cedar swamps are not for the faint-hearted wildflower hunters. Sharp branches claw your face and tear at your clothes as you push through the thickets, teetering along on fallen logs to avoid slipping off into shin-deep muck.  And yet, cedar swamps call to those of us who seek the flowers that grow in only this habitat, where calciphiles draw what they need from the deep-down substrate, while more acid-loving plants like orchids thrive on the sphagnum-covered surface. Lured by the chance that we might find Showy Lady's Slippers here (as well as the rare Pink Pyrola), I joined my friends Sue Pierce and Ruth Brooks to explore this particular Warren-county cedar swamp on a hot muggy day last week.

 Our first clue that we were definitely in the right place was this solid carpet of Naked Miterwort leaves. The only place I have ever seen this tiny, nearly invisible flower (Mitella nuda) was in a cedar swamp. Would I find these delicate greenish-yellow flowers here today?

Nope.  No Naked Miterwort flowers.  We were late for their bloom time, for sure.  But we did find just this one single flower stalk, now gone to seed, among all those tens of thousands of small, green, heart-shaped, scallop-edged leaves.  Turns out, the cute little seeds, clusters of tiny shiny-black orbs resting on shiny green disks, are just as intriguing as their feathery-bracted flowers would have been.

We did find a few other flowers in bloom. These dangling bells of One-sided Pyrola (Orthilia secunda) were evident among a patch of their shiny green basal leaves and a miniature forest of Dwarf Horsetail tangles (Equisetum scirpoides).

Right out in the water of a mossy-banked stream,  the dainty blue flowers of American Brooklime (Veronica americana) were illumined by a stray ray of sunlight piercing the cedar-branched gloom.

And look, our very first orchid of the day, one with the very romantic name of North Wind Green Orchid (Platanthera aquilonis)! And this was the first of many we found of these aptly named green orchids.

The flowers of the North Wind Green Orchid are just as green as their name suggests, so at first glance I thought they might still be in bud.  But no, a few of the florets were indeed in bloom.

We knew that Showy Lady's Slippers preferred a sunny spot, so when we spotted the glow of a clearing well off in the otherwise dimly lit thickets, we made as much of a beeline there as the branchy, mucky, stream-crossed terrain would allow.  And oh, were we rewarded for our efforts!

Well.  Sorta.  We found the LEAVES of nearly a dozen Showy Lady's Slippers all right (Cypripedium reginae).  And they even looked quite healthy. But not a single one held the gorgeous pink-and-white blooms that have earned them the right to be called "showy."  Or lived up to the reginae (queen-like) part of their scientific name. One or two showed evidence of deer browsing, but others perhaps were just not going to bloom at all this year.  Orchids can be like that. And we did see signs that someone had cleared some branches back to allow for more sun on this site.  So, perhaps next year!

And here was one more reward for our branch-scratched faces, bug-bitten brows, and mud-streaked shins:  a single specimen of Pink Pyrola (Pyrola asarifolia), still lovely even as its pink-tinged florets began to decline. We could see quite of few of its broadly oval leaves at this site, but only this single plant was in bloom.  Rated as a Threatened species (S2) in New York State, it's possible that it may not be as rare as reported, according to the New York Flora Association.  Considering the discomforts we suffered to find just this one, it could be that most folks just aren't willing to seek them out in their preferred, quite  difficult-to-access terrain. 

We found evidence yet, of one more orchid, and quite a few of them. Although it was still only in bud, the single, long, narrow leaf near the base of the stem and the much smaller leaves on the stem strongly suggested that this was a Little Club Spur Orchid (Platanthera clavellata).

Luckily, we know of several sites where Platanthera clavellata grows, sites that require much less discomfort to access, so we will go looking for them soon at those sites and will not have to return to this cedar swamp to witness them in bloom.  But I am still glad we entered this swamp today. At least we now know where some Showies grow, and perhaps we will yet encounter them blooming, when we return next year.