This intriguing little plant has captured our curiosity. We first became aware of it in July of 2009, our first month working in Sullivan Woods, while cleaning up dead fall and poison ivy. Sandy Kerbow spotted a couple of bloom stalks. You can imagine the excitement when we found out we had "orchids in our woods". That alone made our entire effort worthwhile, the preservation of wild orchids!
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| Crane Fly Orchid -photo by Linda Lafferty |
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| Crane Fly Orchid leaves -photo by Bob Herbert |
By late September all that remained of our orchids was a happy memory and a dry bloom stalk, but what is this emerging at many locations in the Woods - delightful little magenta leaves all over the place!
They are the leaves of the Crane Fly orchid, they remain all winter, disappearing in May. In late June, the bloom stalks reappear, first as a tiny magenta nose, peaking through the leaf litter.
Only a very few of the leaf colonies produced bloom stalks - here comes the curosity part:
We excavated 3 of the leaves: a small one, a larger one and one with a bloom stalk associated with it.
Our supposition was correct, the bloom stalk had a much larger root complex than the other two.
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| As an aside, the excavated orchid bloomed again this summer! -photo by Bob Herbert |
Now the next question: If a root blooms this year, will it bloom next year as well. In the summer of 2010 we marked 5 of our bloom stalks, three of them rebloomed this year. Today, we marked 32 new bloom locations. Why do we have this explosion of orchids? Not that we are complaining of course, but why? and will it continue? We think we may, in irrigating the Woods, have created a more favorable environment, or maybe our population is maturing?
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| Today we marked 35 bloom sites -photo by Linda Lafferty |