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| Albino Purple Fringed Orchid |
An awesome trip to the Cranberry Glades Botanical Area today. I fretted over the timing quite a bit. I wanted to see all the orchids possible and also to find a new one, Pale Frilly Orchid, a newly described orchid.
The first orchid of the day was a
Large Pad Leaf Orchid which I had been searching for around home for a while. There are a half dozen or so on the farm here but they did not bloom last year or this. I had done a lot of reading about the Pale Frilly Orchid and had been scanning the road sides around Cranberry Glades when I spotted this beauty.
On my first trip around the bog boardwalk I noticed that the Rose Pogonia were barely beginning to open but the Grass Pink was at peak bloom.
Two trips around the boardwalk, hoping to find Purple Fringed Orchid. I ran into a forest service employee who said they did not bloom in the bog this year but gave me a couple of places to look on a side road off the Scenic Highway and along the road where I had already spent some time looking for Pale Frilly even though it was still a little early. I was able to find many Purple Fringed, some already fading badly.
I also heard about this white
Large Purple Fringed Orchid. I found it, but not without some stumbling around in ditches, mud and crud. It was worth every muddy boot and pants leg it cost.
One of my goals for this trip was to find a newly described fringed orchid, the Pale Frilly Orchid or Shrivers Purple Fringed Orchid. I had enough clues from reading and research to have an idea where to look. I spent considerable time walking roadside ditches, following creeks and generally poking around the area. I finally found a couple of groups of these orchids totaling eleven plants. They need another week or week and a half to be in full bloom and I want to go back but may be unable to get there in time. I am going to count it as found and photographed because of the research and work it took to locate it. and I can see the color in the buds.
This next flower was a huge surprise. I had seen
Appalachian Jacob’s Ladder (Polemonium van-bruntiae) Britton, in a bog at Canaan Valley a few years ago and was unaware it was anywhere else in the state. While walking the boardwalk at Cranberry, I caught a glimpse of blue in heavy brush and used a 200mm lens on my camera to get this picture. Read a good report on the status of this globally rare plant
here
This is another rare plant that I saw at Canaan Valley and was surprised to see in the Cranberry area. Glade Spurge.
Very nice. My daughter, husband and I plan to be at the Cranberry Glades on Sunday for the orchid program. We are hoping to see the albino one. My daughter and I saw the white lady slipper at CVR earlier this year. She is a plant ecologist, and we, too, have been on a quest to see a number of flowers this year.
ReplyDeleteThat date is the 6th, not the 7th.
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