Orchids in Their Glory

Kind of chilly and damp today.  A good day to check out the bog where hundreds of Grass Pink orchids grow, now that friends have been reporting them from other sites.  I won't say exactly where this bog is, since I have to cross private property without permission to get to it.  But aside from making me feel a bit sneaky while trespassing, it's the easiest bog I've ever accessed or walked on.   You just slip through  a hedge, and there before you lie orchids as far as the eye can see.

I just couldn't stop taking photos.

I'd hoped to find at least some budding stalks of another orchid, the White Fringed Orchis, that also blooms profusely in this same bog.  Not a trace of them yet.  But then I remembered I'd found them before when the Highbush Blueberries were ripe enough to fall into my hands at a touch.  The blueberries today were a long way from being that ripe.  Oh, how I love the colors of unripe blueberries, those pale aqua spheres topped with rose and lime ruffles.

There were Lowbush Blueberries and Black Huckleberries, too, with only a few ripe fruits here and there.  While hunting for at least a small handful, I noticed these odd little velvety puffs on many of the leaves. (I can't recall now if the growths occurred on the blueberry or huckleberry shrubs or both.)

I've seen blueberry stem galls before that look like red berries, but these growths were only on the leaves, and rather than being solid hard berry-like galls, they were hollow underneath, as I could see when I turned the leaf over.

How odd!  Almost all the low berry shrubs were affected.  I hope it doesn't affect the quality of the fruit, which I hope to enjoy when I return in two weeks or so to find those White Fringed Orchids.

Midsummer's Day Madness

Summer arrived today, and with it a day of suffocating heat.  What kind of crazy people would spend a stifling day like today tromping about in a wetland, blazing sun pounding down like a load of hot bricks on our backs, sweat washing the eyeglasses right off our noses?   Well, they don't call us wildflower nuts for nothing!  That's my friend Bob above, a fellow . . .  er, nature enthusiast, who kindly drove me some hours away to a nature preserve known to be home to the incomparable Showy Lady's Slipper (Cypripedium reginae), truly the queen of the Lady's Slippers.

I'm sure that only a fellow orchid enthusiast would understand why we had to get out to this secret spot today, to catch these incredibly beautiful native orchids while they were still in bloom.  I can't think of anything I could say to convince other folks we hadn't lost our minds.  Perhaps a few photos can serve as explanation.

 When we first walked into this wetland, we didn't see a single Lady's Slipper and we began to worry that we had missed their bloom time.  But then Bob let out a yell:  Here's one!  By the time we were done exploring the area, we had counted over a hundred, most in full glorious bloom, a few past their prime, but many more still in bud.  What a day!


Those Lady's Slippers weren't the only orchids we found in there, either.  Small groups of the White Bog Orchis (Habeneria dilatata) were scattered about the wetland,  holding tall spikes of snowy white blooms well above the surrounding greenery.

I had nearly despaired of getting a close-up shot of this orchid's little blooms until Bob pulled out a white folding screen and held it behind the flower spike.  At last my camera decided to focus on the flower instead of all the grasses beyond it.

Update:  Got a note from a blog reader asking if I had noticed the crab spider lurking among the florets.  I had not, but I do now!  Can you see it up there on the top right?


We were truly startled to find this single Grass Pink (Calopogon tuberosus) in bloom, since another bog where we know these bright pink orchids grow abundantly has shown no sign of them as yet.  

Finding that Grass Pink made it a three-orchid day, enough to satisfy the very nuttiest of nature nuts.  But what really crowned the day was discovering this little patch of Pink Pyrola (Pyrola asarifolia), a flower that's at least as rare in New York as the Showy Lady's Slippers.   We owe this find to a group of orchid enthusiasts who entered the preserve while we were just leaving and pointed  this lovely little flower out to us.

There were many butterflies flitting about the wetland, but none would sit still for a photo.  But never mind.  This baby butterfly did, and it's almost as pretty as its adult form, the Baltimore Checkerspot Butterfly, will be.

Bog Wandering with Nan and Ed

I'd follow them anywhere, Nan and Ed. These two botanizing buddies have explored just about every botanical treasure trove in the northeast, and lucky for me, they've shared some of their favorite places with me, during the last year or two that we've become friends. So just imagine how pleased I was to have introduced Ed last summer to an amazing bog near Lake George, a bog you can just drive up to and walk right into, no pushing through thickets or wading through waist-deep moats or hauling boats through brambles, just park the car nearby and amble in.

Ed had been eager to share this bog with Nan, and today was the perfect day to do so: pleasantly warm, thin clouds to veil the sun, and not raining for a change. When Ed asked me to join them, I paused for a moment, thinking there might not be very much in bloom just yet. But then I regained my senses. It's ALWAYS a good time to visit a bog, especially with such expert botanizers as Nan and Ed. We'll certainly find SOMEthing of interest, I thought. And boy, did we ever! As soon as we slipped through the hedge that surrounds the bog and came into an open clearing, here's what met our eyes: Calopogons by the dozen!

Calopogon tuberosum, also called Grass Pink, may not be one of our rarest orchids, but it sure is one of our most beautiful. Large and showy, with bright magenta blooms that stand out from the surrounding greenery, it was very easy to see as wandered the bog, exclaiming with delight as we discovered more at every turn.

There was a limit to their abundance, though, we discovered as we wandered further afield into areas so overwhelmed by Leatherleaf and laurels, there was no sunlit space beneath for orchids of any kind. We were able to follow deer paths through the shrubbery, but still, my knees and shins began to complain of pain from all the scratchy twigs. How dumb of me to visit a bog in shorts! Ed out there was smart to wear his jeans.

Much of the bog was much more comfortable for walking, with deep, soft mounds of sphagnum moss cushioning every step. It seems that this is an "anchored" rather than a floating bog, with generations upon generations of sphagnum having grown so deep it hit bottom, so to speak.

The sphagnum was so pillowy, it was tempting to think about lying down in it, except that it was also soaking wet like a sponge. If I stood still for more than a moment, cold water would seep up and bathe my feet. Very refreshing, since the sun was starting to burn through and heat up our backs.

Except for the Calopogon, a couple of Pitcher Plants, and these Large Cranberry flowers pictured below, there was little else in bloom in the bog today, although we saw many White Fringed Orchids in swelling buds, abundant as Dandelions. We'll certainly have to come back to witness their show. They and the Cottongrass should be well in bloom within two weeks.

But as I said before, there's always SOMEthing of interest in a bog, even when nothing's blooming. These pink-flocked fruits of Bog Rosemary, for example, are just as pretty as the pale pink flowers were a month ago.

I was fascinated to find these golden baby cones on some Tamaracks.

Other Tamaracks close by had rose-colored cones, like these that I photographed in another bog two weeks ago. Very curious! Why are some rose and others gold? They will all turn brown, eventually, as they harden.

The day was still young as we left the bog and headed to Dunham's Bay for a paddle in Ed's tandem canoe. That was fun, too, although the plant community along the stream we paddled was rather monotonous, much less interesting than the bog. Anyway, I was too busy paddling to take any photos of the stream. But I did get a shot of these Yellow Swallowtails puddling about in the mud near the parking lot.