autumn coralroot orchid...

[cnycharles]

at chenango valley state park, near binghamton, ny. Ken and I have been searching for autumn coralroot in new york state for a number of years, but had to travel to pennsylvania to see and get pictures of it. in recent years, we have found a number of orchids there both in and out of flower, partly because our orchid friend jerry pedini used to volunteer there and had scouted out some orchids. since then we found a few more, and a few weeks ago ken was scouting out some of the trails since he lives relatively near the park and he found two autumn coralroots in flower right on a trail that goes around one of the lakes! it was exciting, just those two plants because it had been our first spotting of this late orchids in new york.

I came up a few days after he found the orchids; he warned me that to get a good picture of one of the open flowers, you had to 'get right down and around some trees'.... how right he was! these two pics are ones that he took as I was taking pictures of the one plant right in the trail. i'm wedged between two saplings, the lake is right behind me, people are trying to walk down the trail that this orchid is growing out of and it's raining and....

this is what it takes to get the shot... do you ever feel like you're having a day like this? i'll be editing and uploading flower pics soon

 

[NYEric]

Hey Mister! Did you drop a contact?

 

[Linus_Cello]

Looks like it's growing on a path. Surprised no one stepped on it.

 

[MaryPientka]

I'm impressed

 

[cnycharles]

Looks like it's growing on a path. Surprised no one stepped on it.

Exactly! Ken first found it and was asking people to step around the path while he was taking pictures. We were surprised when we came back a few days later it wasn't broken off. We think the one saving grace was that it was so close to the dropped small tree across the path that nobody was going to step near it and trip on the log

 

[Clark]

I would of used scissors and put the flower elevated to get myself comfortable.

Some questions-
No leaves???
No chlorophyll??
Does this come up every year, or does it go dormant for some years?

Thank you Charles.

 

[cnycharles]

corallorhiza don't have any leaves, and this one has a little chlorophyll; some have none or very little. interesting that the early coralroot (first) and the autumn coralroot (last) both have a little but most of the rest that i've seen have little to none
this one is sporadic, though some places there are some every year. it's been reported on the native orchid conference email list that there were lots all over the country this year. botanists do say that this one can move around a little bit, so not always reliable

 

[Parryaw]

Are there any native epiphytic orchids in these parts?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[cnycharles]

pics 1

when we first arrived, the one plant in the trail by the lake was still intact,
as were the two other plants up the hill a bit. I took pictures for a while and
ken headed back to the car. after I finished I dallied looking through the woods
and just before I got back to the parking lot, I thought I saw a purple stem in
the trees up on the bank. I went up and found a few dozen more coralroots!
I went and got ken and we found around maybe 75 or so plants. ken went
back to the car, and I went further along the bank and found even more!
later on ken went back and found even more, so we found altogether easily more than 100 plants

 

[cnycharles]

pics 2

 

[cnycharles]

Are there any native epiphytic orchids in these parts?

no, I think the closest south there are any epiphytic orchids are south carolina or georgia

I forgot to mention that this species often doesn't have open flowers. the flowers self-pollinate as the flower starts to open and then the swelling pod closes the flower. there is a variety pringlei that has open flowers, but there is debate as to whether or not a plant in this area that has some open flowers is this variety or just an occasional lucky find

 

[MaryPientka]

Beautiful!

 

[NYEric]

Great photos!

 

[Migrant13]

Those really are excellent photos. Thanks for sharing.

 

[SlipperFan]

You have much more patience and persistence than do I!

 

[KyushuCalanthe]

Charles, a flower only an orchid nut could love…

Nice shots of a tiny species however. I have mixed feelings about ring flashes in anything but truly up close macro shots since they typically produce unnatural lighting - having said that, using brighter backgrounds does help as in the above photos.

Have you seen C. wisteriana on any of your outings?

 

[naoki]

corallorhiza don't have any leaves, and this one has a little chlorophyll; some have none or very little. interesting that the early coralroot (first) and the autumn coralroot (last) both have a little but most of the rest that i've seen have little to none
this one is sporadic, though some places there are some every year. it's been reported on the native orchid conference email list that there were lots all over the country this year. botanists do say that this one can move around a little bit, so not always reliable

Wow, you are dedicated, Charles! Very nice photos.

Among Corallorhiza, C. trifida, C. wisteriana, and this species has more chlorophyll than others as you said. It's measured in
a recent paper (abstract only, though). It is interesting that even the species which doesn't seem to show green (e.g. C. maculata) still produce a small amount of chlorophyll. But, the main question of this paper is probably not something which orchid people are interested in: how much chroloplast genome has been degraded in Corallorhiza, which became mainly hetetrotophic (i.e. not photosynthetic) relatively recently.

 

[cnycharles]

Thanks, and thanks for the info. Actually that is interesting