An Alien!

[Leafmite]

The worst is...had you been caught digging up one of those orchids, you would have been fined! How fair is that? I hear in England, they fence off the valuable orchids...they say to protect them from being stolen but I honestly suspect it is to protect them from being mowed....

[ronaldhanko]

Originally Posted by cythaenopsis

^ Wow, that's super sad... hearing about such beautiful plants being ruthlessly destroyed by ignorant workers. Probably people working for a paycheck and could care less about what they're doing. Ignorance abounds.

I am sure that is the case. We complained to the Park Service but doubt it did any good. Thanks for looking.

---------- Post added at 04:51 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:48 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Stray59

Ron:
I just clicked on the photo without looking at who posted the pic. When I saw the photo, I immediately knew it was your post - beautiful photo showing great detail with good lighting and a perfect positioning - had to be Ron's. Have I detected some fun-rivalry between you and your wife as to who gets what photo? You both seem to have "the eye" of really nice photographers.
Thanks for posting - always a pleasure to accompany you on an outing. How do you find the time to go on these great trips and also spend the time posting on Orchid Board? Not sure how you pull that off, but I am so glad you do!
Steve

Thanks for the very nice compliment, Steve. Much appreciated, and yes, there is some competition between us, only she always seems to get the one best picture of the outing. We do most of our outing in the summer when both of us are less busy and when we are doing a fair bit of traveling anyway.

---------- Post added at 04:52 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:51 PM ----------

Originally Posted by euplusia

Wonderful how the colours shine against the background. Interesting to read that this species has captured northern America. I once has this species growing at the foundation of my greenhouse. Its here in the forests and can adapt to undisturbed garden conditions.

Thanks for looking and commenting. It seems very adaptable here also. In the location where this photo was taken it grows both in full sun and in heavy shade, in a very dry location and in a much damper location.

---------- Post added at 04:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:52 PM ----------

Originally Posted by WhiteRabbit

beautiful! I just love these!

Thanks, Sonya.

---------- Post added at 04:54 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:53 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Leafmite

The worst is...had you been caught digging up one of those orchids, you would have been fined! How fair is that? I hear in England, they fence off the valuable orchids...they say to protect them from being stolen but I honestly suspect it is to protect them from being mowed....

It'd be pretty hard to fence off the orchids in Olympic National Park. The Park is huge and there are thousands (millions?) of orchids in the park.

[ronaldhanko]

Here's another color form and a link to a description of the species.

[camille1585]

Gorgeous!
Despite them being native here, I've only seen a few of them. There's a stand of them hidden dense part of the forest, and you really have to struggle through the thorns to get to them! Nature's barricade I guess Poaching is a huge problem in the Netherlands I've read. The country is densely populated, full of people who love plants but are totally ignorant. A local newspaper once ran an article about some orchids growing in the area and very stupidly published the location. Within a week they had all been dug up. Disgusting.

I'm surprised that in the US the park services don't do a better job of protecting orchids! Both in France and the Netherlands in many of the orchid dense places roadside mowing is only done once the orchids have gone to seed. Texel island in the Netherlands has some fields chock full of orchids. A sign on the gate explains that the mowing is done very late and the sheep don't graze there while the orchids are growing/blooming. That would explain why those fields are just a sea of pink, with literally hundreds of thousands of orchids in them.

[Paphluvr]

I just noticed last week that the local cable company had run a new line right through a nice patch of Cyp. calceolus var. parviflorum along M-46 here in Sanilac Co., MI.
How ironic that I, as an orchid grower of 35+ years specializing in slipper orchids, can't touch them but the uninformed can cut right through them and decimate the group. This was along a 200-300' stretch of the road.

By the same token, I've seen orchids in one of our local roadside parks along Lake Huron get mowed by the mowing crew. They were either Cypripedium or Epipactis helleborine. The foliage of these two looks very similar before they bloom.

I should also mention that the group of Cyp's that I mentioned in the first paragraph also gets mowed during the summer by the road crew. I doubt that they have much of a chance to set seed.

[ronaldhanko]

Thanks for commenting, Camille. I think part of the problem in our national parks is that they are so huge and there is so much to watch out for, that the park service just doesn't know where a lot of these things are or what they're doing when they do work in the parks. They are as ignorant in many cases, as the construction workers Paphluvr mentioned. When we are in one of the parks we always try to find a park service employee who can tell us where the orchids and other rare plants are, but most of them do not even know there are orchids or other rare plants in the park. We've had better success in the Canadian parks.

---------- Post added at 02:31 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:25 PM ----------

Thanks for commenting, Paphluvr. It is ironic and a shame that such things happen and they do happen here too as I've noted. The one good thing here is that many of the orchids are in the mountains and accessible only by driving rough forest service roads and hiking and most of the people who get into the backcountry are sufficiently knowledgeable to leave things alone, evne if they don't know what they are. Even then, however, we keep locations of rare stuff secret and let only those know whom we trust.

Had a really bad incident last spring in Washington Park, a city park on the San Juan Straits near Anacortes that is heavily used and that is easily accessible by anyone and everyone. When the Fairy Slippers were blooming last spring someone went through the area and picked nearly everyone (there are hundreds, probably thousands of them). They are so fragile that they usually don't survive picking, so we are waiting to see what's left this spring.

[camille1585]

I just find it a tad ironic how us, as developed and supposedly 'intelligent' western nations go around screaming "save the rainforests!!", yet most people are oblivious to the destruction going on in our own backyards... Things feel so hopeless when even park services, who should be protecting nature, actively participate in its destruction.

What a shame about the Fairy slippers, hope they'll be fine I have heard that in the UK they will protect known and valuable stands of rare plants. They fence off the patch, and I believe that there are educational signs. That's not too hard to implement on a small scale, though it won't deter determined 'criminals'.

[ronaldhanko]

Originally Posted by camille1585

I just find it a tad ironic how us, as developed and supposedly 'intelligent' western nations go around screaming "save the rainforests!!", yet most people are oblivious to the destruction going on in our own backyards... Things feel so hopeless when even park services, who should be protecting nature, actively participate in its destruction.

More than a tad ironic and very true! They are in so many places and such large areas that it would be impossible. Washington Park, which is only a city park is 220 acres (I don't know how many hectares that is) and the orchids grow all over through the park.

---------- Post added at 02:47 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:47 PM ----------

Here's a link to a blog post on the orchids of Washington Park.

Native Orchids of the Pacific Northwest and the Canadian Rockies: Orchids of Washington Park

[Paphluvr]

Originally Posted by ronaldhanko

The Broad-leaved Helleborine, Epipactis helleborine, is a European import first found in the USA around 1878. It is one of two Epipactis species found the Pacific Northwest.



Native Orchids of the Pacific Northwest and the Canadian Rockies: The Northwest's Two Epipactis Species

Here's the photo of mine, growing in the front flower bed under some ferns and hostas.

http://flic.kr/p/dWKff3

[ronaldhanko]

Your photos are private and can't be viewed by anyone unless they are made public or unless you make someone your friend (I think).