Florida's Dancing Lady Orchid - May she continue to dance!!!

Florida's dancing lady orchid...Tolumnia bahamensis.

This little beauty, related to Oncidium, used to be found in quite a few wild areas in the coastal scrub in a very restricted area of southeastern coastal Florida...although due to its very restricted habitat, it has never been common, even in its heyday. Heavy development has all but wiped this species out, but a few plants still eke out a tenuous existence within a local state park and a very few remaining empty lots. While the land is protected where this species grows, collection by poachers continues to be a very real threat. This species is considered endangered in the state of Florida and is thus protected by state law.

For someone fortunate enough to be out in the field in one of these few localities, the search for plants is quite daunting...their heads of whitish flowers reach to the edge of the wild rosemary (not related to the spice) and palmetto scrub beneath an overstory of scrubby pine trees. To add to the insult for this species, seed pods seem to form only rarely, perhaps pointing to a decline in their natural pollinators...I would suspect copious use of pesticides in surrounding housing developments to keep boring, green lawns looking their best may be to blame, but that's only pure conjecture on my part. This is a more common species in the Bahamas, from whence its specific epithet is derived. It is also related to (and some would consider it synonymous with) Tol. variegata, which can readily be found in cultivation.

The plants themselves grow like a typical equitant Oncidium (i.e. Tolumnia) with somewhat narrower leaves arranged in small fans around microscopic pseudobulbs. Each fan is joined to the last by a rather long isthmus of rhizome (atypical for Tolumnias), which can actually look like an emerging flower spike before the leaves start to fan out at the tip. They grow in the bases of rosemary, palmetto, and/or pine twigs very low to the ground, with their root tips actually buried beneath the pine needle litter in the sand.

Each flower is between 1/2 and one inch across, depending on the plant (Luer shows a photo of a sheet covered with numerous individual flowers, showing marked variation in flower shape and size, in his epic work, The Native Orchids of Florida). The flowers are somewhat unpleasantly scented--the best way I can describe it is that it is similar to the smell of the commercial herbicide, Round-Up.

You can find out more about this species on its profile page on the Florida Native and Naturalized Orchid Website:

Tolumnia bahamensis

Rare and beautiful - Crested Coralroot (Hexalectris spicata)

While vouchered specimens of this species have been found in many counties in the state of Florida, this species is rarely seen, as it blends in quite well with the surrounding forest, making it difficult to see until you are quite close. Then, the true beauty of these flowers is revealed. Each is a little over an inch wide and scented pleasingly of baby powder. I would consider this perhaps the second- or third-most attractive terrestrial orchid in the state of Florida (first is Cleistes bifaria, the Rosebud Orchid, which holds a special place in my heart as one of my first-observed native orchids).

The plants themselves bear no leaves, instead living in a mycotrophic relationship with fungi hosted (and consumed) in the coral-like roots. These fungi, in turn, send out mycelia throughout the soil and infect the roots of other plants, forming a network of nutrients funneled from one plant to another in a complex "nutrient highway" beneath the forest floor. While many orchids after the earliest seedling stage will bear leaves and begin to perform some of their own nutrient manufacture through photosynthesis, they never lose their fungal relationship entirely. The coralroots never grow beyond this earliest relationship, relying their entire lives on nutrients gathered from their fungi. Because of this delicate relationship, coralroots will die in short order if transplanted to another site.



You can read more about this species on my website at:

>> The Hexalectris spicata profile page at Florida Native Orchids <<

Enjoy!
---Prem

Another Rare Beauty - Almost Alba Grass Pink

AKA Calopogon tuberosus, this particular flower was just shy of being a true alba, with just a pale flush of color in the lip and the bases of the sepals/petals. Typical flower color for these is a medium pink, with variants ranging from true alba to eye-searing magenta. Located in the same general vicinity as the Rose Pogonias posted a few days ago.



---Prem

Rare beauty - two flowered Rose Pogonia

Pogonia ophioglossoides, known as the Rose Pogonia or Snakemouth Orchid, is one of the most far-ranging orchids on the North American continent, being found as far north as southern Canada and as far south as south-central Florida. It is a relatively common orchid of moist, acid bogs, wet meadows, and pinelands, blooming at the height of spring (early summer in the north). Plants most of the time have a single flower (sometimes lightly scented of raspberries), but occasionally, two- and even three-flowered plants will appear within large, robust colonies. This particular plant was growing along a roadside in west-central Florida.



While it is wrapping up its blooming in central Florida, northern Florida should see this beauty in bloom for several more weeks.

Enjoy!

---Prem

Bewitched, Part II

So, without further ado, here are the flowers of the shadow witch. These are flowers that I have wanted to see in person ever since seeing them in Luer's landmark book, The Native Orchids of Florida. First, we have the entire inflorescence. The flowers are about 1/2 inch (approx. 1 cm) across, ranging from whitish-cream to mint-green in color. They have a faint, citrusy fragrance.

and here is a flower close-up. Each individual flower is bent backwards to form a small landing platform. The lip faces inward toward the spike, with the petals and sepals forming a flat surface beneath the column with its curious tooth overlapping the small pollinia. All of the floral parts have a crystalline, sparkling texture. The ovaries and remainder of the flowering stem (as well as the backs of the flowers) are covered in fine hairs.


So, there you have a close-up view of these bewitching flowers.

Enjoy!

---Prem

Bewitched, Part I

This past year was special for me, as I have gotten to see many orchid species in bloom in the wild that I have not seen before. One of these was Ponthieva racemosa, also known as the Shadow Witch Orchid. Oddly enough, I've run across plants of this species since I was a teenager, but had been unable to get back to the locality during the fall when this species is in bloom. The closest I had come was seeing a plant rescued from a lot under construction in a subdivision near Tom Brown Park in Tallahassee, but since the plant was in a pot, that didn't have quite the same impact.

While out hunting for other woodland species, rosettes of P. racemosa leaves show up frequently. They are easy to spot with their light green that, when the sunlight catches them just right, shimmer like satin. These are plants inhabiting moist, shady woodlands and floodplains, growing in areas that are surprisingly wet, but very infrequently under water (the floods after T.S. Fay were a rare exception, where large swaths of woods were inundated in the floodwaters).


In November, as I headed out to one park to photograph several species (and hybrids) of fall-blooming ladies' tresses, I finally found a few of these plants in flower. Cross one more orchid off the list. So, what did the flowers look like? Well, you'll have to wait until another blog post to see those.

Until next time...

---Prem

Hanging on by thread.

As has been stated before, Florida is at an intersection of the ranges of temperate species from the north and tropical species from the south. One such southern species, Cranichis muscosa, grows primarily in the Caribbean, West Indies, Central America, and northern South America. While some southern species, such as Encyclia cochleata, end up establishing themselves fairly well in the southern swamps, this orchid has never been common. It was first reported in 1903 in a collection most likely made in the Fakahatchee swamp. It had not been seen in Florida again for nearly a century. In 1991, a plant was reported and again in 2000, another suspect plant was reported in Miami-Dade County. This plant was subsequently stolen.

In 2004, a new small population was discovered somewhere in the Fakahatchee swamp area by Karen Relish and Mike Owen. This population is a closely guarded secret, so don't expect to see these plants in person anytime soon.

Interestingly enough, cultivated plants of this species from elsewhere in the Americas are very aggressive growers in the greenhouses of the Atlanta Botanical Gardens, seeding themselves regularly into pots where they are not welcome. One of these plants was gifted to Paul Martin Brown, and it is a photograph of one of eleven inflorescences on his plant which I present below.

The plants consist of a basal rosette of glossy leaves with strong veination. The color is a lovely medium bluish-green.

The flowers are tiny...being only about 5 mm across, so this requires a good macro lens, excellent lighting, and little breeze to obtain a good photograph. My Sigma 105mm macro with my Canon Digital Rebel XTi did an adequate job of capturing these tiny jewels.


The upper floral part with the green speckles is the lip. The two petals act as a small winged platform below and to the sides of the column. The lateral sepals fold downward while the dorsal sepal folds back against the ovary. The column is a curious shape, with two pairs of winglike projections on either side and a highly curious tooth which projects downward and in front of the dorsal sepal. This orchid is, again, a wonder of miniaturization, with this complex structure being achieved with only a few thousands of cells, as opposed to the millions-plus that would make up a larger orchid flower, such as a larger-flowered Cattleya.


Many thanks to Paul Martin Brown for allowing me to photograph his cultivated plant.

Enjoy!
---Prem

Southern (?) Twayblade

Another sure sign of early spring is the emergence of the Southern Twayblade (Listera australis). I put a question mark in the title, as the common name (and the specific name australis - meaning 'southern') imply that this is an orchid only of the south. In fact, its range extends from near Sarasota, Florida to the north well into southern Canada, so it could just as easily be viewed as a northern species as a southern one. In my native haunts of yesteryear in Tallahassee, Florida, these plants would typically emerge in mid-February and persist through mid-March, depending on the population -- some sites would tend to bloom earlier than others. One time, I encountered a very large plant blooming in mid-June in an area to the northwest of Tallahassee, although this is very atypical. In central Florida, the plants are right now in full bloom, with a few stragglers still showing buds.

It is hard to appreciate how small these plants are until you see them in person. In fact, if you do see one, don't look away before you mark the spot, as it will likely take you several minutes to relocate the plant. In fact, this very thing happened to me the first time I found one as a teenager in the woods behind my house. The plant itself consists of a small stem, often tinged with purple, that supports two teardrop-shaped leaves. The leaves are a bit unusual for a monocot, as they almost seem to support a small network of veins rather than having strictly parallel veins. Typical leaf size is about 1 inch long by 1/2 inch wide, although especially large plants can have larger, wider, almost-round leaves about 1.5 inches in diameter. I have seen around 35 flowers on these more robust plants, where the typical flower count is around 8 or 9 per stem. The flowers themselves are about 1cm long and 2-3mm wide...extremely small and difficult to appreciate without the benefit of close up photography. Seedlings consist of just a pair of leaves without the flowering stem.

Below is a photo of a typical plant.



The flower structure, although miniaturized to the point that only a few hundred cells make up the petals, are still a typical orchid flower structure. Arranged around the central column is the usual cadre of three sepals, two petals and a disproportionately large lip. The lip curls around the column and then extends downward a ways before forking into two lobes. From a distance, these flowers look like pinheads with small threads glued onto them. Below is a closeup of just the flower.



Below are a few more shots taken during this same field trip.





Enjoy!

---Prem