Master of Disguise

This past weekend, while out on a photography trip, we came across this little girl hanging out on a Spring Ladies Tresses (Spiranthes vernalis) inflorescence. Spiders are often encountered on flowers of all sorts, mostly ambush predators like this Crab Spider and the Green Lynx Spider. They lie in wait for a hapless insect to come near them and then they pounce! These spiders are known to alter their coloration to match their surroundings and thus blend in. Imagine the next time you go to your refrigerator, a predator disguised as a salami pounces on you and eats you!

Old Man of the Swamp - Cigar Orchid (Cyrtopodium punctatum)

This is the story of the Old Man of the Swamp.

Years ago, perhaps around the same time that this photograph was taken of a cartload of orchids cribbed from the swamps (including Cigar Orchids, Mule-ear Oncidiums, and Dollar Orchids - Cyrtopodum punctatum, Trichocentrum undulatum, and Prosthechea boothiana, respectively),


a small cigar orchid (Cyrtopodium punctatum) began its tenuous existence on a buttonwood somewhere deep in the Everglades. As time went on, its forest grew, never too tall, as this was a harsh environment-- shielding this plant from unfriendly eyes. In time, long after these orchid collectors had left, it became a large specimen, engulfing the fork in the tree that it called home.


Eventually, however, the winds of a hurricane came barreling through the 'glades, knocking down the surrounding trees and killing the tree that this orchid calls home, reducing it to a bare stump crowned with the orchid. Now an old man, yet hale and hearty, it continues to offer up its fragrant saffron-and-crimson flowers, each about an inch across, to the busying bumblebees that visit it in hopes of collecting nectar.


We, too, come here to its ancient ruin of a home, in a different era where some folks are more apt to leave plants be than to try to collect them, destined to die in some garden--especially considering the fact that this plant grows on federally protected property. We visit it in its waning years, for, surely, its host stump cannot forestall wind, weather, and the decay of time forever. One day, hopefully many years from now, it will plunge into the brackish water below and meet its final demise, but not before it has shed many dust-like seeds into the surrounding forest still standing...these seeds may become new seedlings, and if left undisturbed by wind, water, men, and the threat of a rising ocean, they may become massive plants like this old man--destined to repeat his life cycle and continue the existence of his kind well into the future.


You can view my Cowhorn/Cigar Orchid information page at the following link:

>>> Cowhorn/Cigar Orchid Information Page <<<

Florida's First Native Slipper Orchid?!

I have just received word from a fellow orchid photographer exploring in an undisclosed area (and one that will remain undisclosed) in South Florida that he has discovered what appears to be a colony of a species of Phragmipedium (or, who knows...a completely new genus?) growing deep in the swamps. The plants are presently in high bud. I will be heading down in the next week or two when the buds open...from the photos I've seen so far, there is already a splash of orange on the lips of the developing flowers....AND....they seem to have some rather packed-in petals similar to Phrag caudatum. So, colorful, and potentially long-petaled and growing in Florida? Who could ask for more?

This is really great news, as the whole slipper orchid clan has been completely unrepresented in Florida. There have been reports in the past of species of Cypripedium being found in the northern counties, but none have been substantiated.

More soon.

If you didn't realize this by now, this was an April Fools' Day joke.

New Florida Orchid Book Available

My good friend and fellow nature and Florida orchid photographer, Rich Leighton, has just released a new 'coffee table' type book featuring many of his native orchid photos. I have not seen the book itself, but I have seen his photos, and they are fantastic. Here is a link where you can order the book:

http://www.floridanaturephotography.com/bookstore/

and here is a link to a brief promotional video he has made about it:

http://www.floridanaturephotography.com/blog/our-first-book-native-orchids-of-florida-is-now-available/

--Prem

Photo Featured in new National Wildlife Federation Field Guide to North American Wildflowers

The photo that you see above is featured in the entry for the Florida Butterfly Orchid (Encyclia tampensis) in the new National Wildlife Federation Field Guide to Wildflowers of North America (click to view the book on Amazon.com). I am honored and humbled to have this photo included in this epic work.

A Giant of Liliputian Proportions - Pteroglossaspis ecristata

Pteroglossaspis ecristata is a plant of contradictions. While once fairly common in Florida, its population has declined in recent years, becoming much harder to find in flower. Its paper-thin leaves are reinforced with stiff veins, making them resemble a palmetto seedling. Its sometimes exceptionally tall flowering stems are capped with small flowers, each only 1 to 1.5 cm tall.


My son, Josh, admiring a tall flowering plant.

While inflorescences up to 5.5 feet (1.7 meters) are not unheard of, a more typical flowering stem height is 2 to 3 feet (0.7 to 0.9 meters) tall.



The flowers themselves are not extraordinarily attractive...perhaps more bizarre than anything else. Luer, in an illustration in his book, likens them to a number of turbaned Sikhs peering around the stem. Paul Martin Brown describes them as "green and black orchids on a stick". It is often hard to capture more than one or two flowers face-on in a photograph owing to how the flowers twist around the stem.



You can read more about this species here:

>> Pteroglossaspis ecristata information page <<

Trail Tales (or Stuff I've Seen While Hunting For Orchids), Part 5

While out photographing orchids in the Florida panhandle, we found this lovely specimen growing in a roadside bog. This is the white-topped pitcher plant (Sarracenia leucophylla).



Pitcher plants are a type of carnivorous plant, trapping insects in a pool of liquid inside the hollowed-out leaves. The inside of the pitcher is waxy and covered with downward-pointing hairs that make it easy for an insect to fall in but difficult to get out. The pool of liquid contains digestive fluids that break down the insects into basic nutrients that the plants can absorb...nutrients that are generally lacking in the highly acidic bog soil where these plants grow.

The Importance of Being Earnest Observant

When I was a teenager, my mom and I would often take drives out into the Apalachicola National Forest or the Lake Talquin State Forest nearby just to see what could be seen. As we ran across interesting plants that we had not seen before, we would consult our guidebooks, as well as the resident botanist and herbarium director at Florida State University, Dr. Loran Anderson (now retired). We had established a good rapport with him and I especially would report any new orchid finds. I was able to help him obtain a few orchid specimens for his herbarium that he did not have, as well as establish new records for several species not seen before in Leon County - Zeuxine strateumatica, Platanthera flava, and Platanthera ciliaris.

I also remember running across a population of Spiranthes that resembled S. praecox, but the habit and blooming time of these was off (about a month too early and in woodlands, as opposed to open, wet areas). I had brought this to Dr. Anderson's attention on occasion, but never really pursued the matter further. About a decade later, Paul Martin Brown described this species formally as Spiranthes sylvatica, or the Woodland Ladies' Tresses.

Drat.

Fast forward to a year or two ago. My son, Josh, and I were photographing Malaxis spicata in an area near Ocala, FL. While out there, Josh brought to my attention a plant that had variegated leaves. I remember reading in Paul Martin Brown's Wild Orchids of Florida about a variegated Malaxis, so I chalked it up to another find of this form. I did photograph it, as it appeared interesting. When I consulted the book back at home, I realized that he had described a variegated form of Malaxis unifolia, not M. spicata. In other words, this was a form that had not yet been formally introduced to science! Thankfully, I was able to correlate the gps trail that our Garmin unit had recorded with the time stamp of the photograph, so we had an approximate locality for the plant. Upon our return, after about an hour of searching for it, we relocated the plant, put a colored flag on it, and covered it with a wire hanging basket to protect it from deer and hog browse.

We brought this plant to Paul's attention, and he formally described the variegated form of this species in the North American Native Orchid Journal in the August 2009 edition as Malaxis spicata forma variegata P.M. Brown, P. & J. Subrahmanyam forma nov. . You can view this journal on-line at the following link:

http://culturesheet.org/_media/users:nanoj:nanoj_15_1_.pdf

And here is the photograph of this newly described form that we saw that day:



So, while I had missed out on the opportunity to bring an entirely new species to science, which would be, admittedly, much cooler, I did have the opportunity to bring a newly described form of an existing species to science. And, as I continue to head out into the field to photograph orchid species, who knows what might still be out there to discover?

As a footnote, a colleague of mine was out photographing the variegated Malaxis and discovered a plant nearby completely lacking the orange color in the flowers...in other words, an albescent form of the species. This form was also described in the same article and named after his daughter Morgan as Malaxis spicata forma morganiae P. M. Brown.