A Few Weeks Too Late: Plants in Motion

It's no secret that my guiding passion in nature photography is botany...I love plants, especially orchids, but also plants in general. To that end, I set out often enough into the field hunting rare plants in their environment to photograph them and chronicle them for others to enjoy. Many wildlife photographers (folks I like to call 'faunists') tend to look down on this as "easy peasy lemon squeezie" work. They do not appreciate the complications a botanical photographer faces in the field...after all, they say, plants don't move, unlike that lion out on the African plains or that rare bird that would be spooked away had the photographer not spent hours sitting in a blind. To this I would beg to differ...plants do indeed move. They may not pick their roots up and transport themselves to a new location, but they are ever on the move nonetheless.

Take the scrub lupine for example. I was told a few weeks ago that these were in bloom, so one week ago, I set out to relocate some previously planted specimens near where my children and I volunteered to plant out new seedlings. When we arrived, we were met with bitter disappointment...all the flowers had finished, leaving a healthy stalk of developing seed pods...material for next year's seedling planting, I am sure. We headed to another nearby park where these were known to grow naturally. Again, not a flower was to be seen, where two or three weeks ago, we would have seen these in full flower. We will have to return earlier next year to catch these in flower. Plants in motion.



Many of the native orchids are the same way. You can pass by a location and not see a single plant as their developing buds blend in with the greenery. A few weeks later, all the flowers have finished and wilted to a deep brown color, again blending into the background vegetation. Unless you are there during the two week window when their flowers flushed a brilliant orange, you would never know that an orchid grew there. Plants in motion.

Several species of orchids further complicate our lives by having flowers that last for only one morning and wilt by afternoon...several species of Vanilla do this, as well as Triphora trianthophora and Triphora craigheadii. The latter two add insult to injury by synchronous blooming - every member of the colony will bloom on the same morning. Plants in motion.

Many of the rarer orchids and other plants in Florida exist in small populations in relatively inaccessible areas requiring many hours of driving and walking, often following vague directions to their locations. Plants in motion.

Finally, some of the rarest plants do indeed move. Whether by environmental catastrophes or the poacher's unscrupulous actions, known populations sometimes become entirely wiped out, only to have a new population discovered in a different area nearby, these new locations kept a closely guarded secret lest the same thing happen again. Or, perhaps, the last population of a species in Florida is wiped out for good, never to be seen again...we have twelve such orchid species that have not been seen for many years. Plants in motion.

So next time your admire that photograph of a rare plant, such as what might be seen in the native orchid gallery, linked to the giant 'View the Gallery' image at the top of this blog, keep in mind that the photographer may have spent many hours, if not days, weeks, months, or even years, hunting down this quarry and bringing you that photograph as he chases down plants ever in motion.