greater purple fringed and jam bog (lots of pics)

[cnycharles]

Last tuesday I took the opportunity to go to fellow native orchid hunter Jerry Pedini's area where he said he had found some flowering plants of platanthera grandiflora or the greater purple fringed orchid. I was curious about what these plants were, because I've only seen them in open, mucky black alkaline areas or the same in open, woody areas. His woods didn't seem to qualify from what I'd seen before. Had to drive through lots of rain to get there, and once again the rain let off just before I got to where we were going to meet! We went to his place and walked through the wet woods and after a few minutes we arrived at the spot where he'd found the orchids. Sure enough, the high hillsides was draining through a number of shelves or saddles, and the soil there was richer, blacker and there were obvious alkaline-indicator plants (meaning there was calcium in the soil). The flowers were a little smaller than those I've seen over in cortland and cayuga county, but definitely the greater purple fringed (plus the plants I'd seen a few days ago of lesser purple fringed up by west canada creek were weeks away from flowering). The top of one plant that had been flowering had been eaten by deer despite Jerry's efforts to deter them , but four plants were found in flower and a good handful of seedlings without flower stems.

It started pouring just after we left jam bog, and luckily we didn't have any of the tornados that were in upstate ny right where we were, but as I was driving back to the utica area I was watching the lightning flash in the top of one storm that I think did have a tornado at some point (but not near me or my apartment, thankfully)

greater purple fringed orchid

seedling without flowers

some cute, tiny mushrooms

the photographer next to the orchids

Jerry showing off his orchids

 

[JeanLux]

great pics again Charles; I like those lips!!!! And cool pic-hunters !!! Jean

 

[cnycharles]

next wave, mostly jam bog orchids

oxalis near the greater purple fringed orchids

rose pogonia orchid at jam bog

'husband and wife' flowers

wild cranberry blossoms

northern white fringed orchid with blue damselfly perched on top

pitcher plants

 

[cnycharles]

last batch

merge of five panned images of most of jam bog. jam bog is mostly floating sphagnum moss over a pond that is mostly collected rain and spring water. it does have some outflow so is probably more correctly called a 'poor fen' because it has very few nutrients. a rich fen would the the spot where the greater purple fringed orchids grow because of the high organic matter content

grass pinks

grass pinks

sundew!

'leaves' and stem of stunted tamarack on the floating bog

 

[JeanLux]

Excellent pics and super panorama-view!!!! Jean

 

[toddybear]

You are several weeks ahead of me...our Platanthera are barely showing colour in the buds, but our Arethusa and Calopogon are blooming. Amazing how loose the flowers are on your grandiflora...and how pale. The NL forms are much more robust, more densely packed with blooms and deeper pink....your grandiflora look like our psycodes (except the lip opening is classic grandiflora)

 

[Hera]

Lucky duck! Its a wonderful area.

 

[SlipperFan]

Excellent photos, Charles. Thanks for sharing.

 

[biothanasis]

Impressive pictures!!! Thank you very much Charles!

 

[fbrem]

incredible, thanks for sharing this with us.

Forrest

 

[John M]

Wonderful photos! It's a treat to see them. Thanks for posting!

 

[kentuckiense]

First off, I have to say that I'm very jealous of the variety that you've got blooming in your area right now. Things are pretty sparse in my neck of the woods.

However, I'm just not convinced that those are P. grandiflora. They look like P. psycodes to me, and I'll give a few reasons why:

-Most importantly, the two pollinia are parallel. In P. grandiflora, the pollinia form an angle (see http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachbradford/4697984091/). This difference results in P. psycodes depositing pollinia on Lepidopteran eyes while P. grandiflora deposits pollinia on Lepidopteran probosci. This, to me, is why I fall in the P. psycodes camp for these plants.

-The nectary entrance appears to be more rectangular. Again, this is very diagnostic and reflects the pollination syndrome. See the above link and note the perfectly round nectary opening.

-Re: bloom time. I've heard many discussions of early and late blooming races of P. psycodes in the same area.

I'd send photos to P.M. Brown and see what he has to say.

 

[KyushuCalanthe]

Feast for the eyes dude, feast for the eyes. Thank you! I think I have to side with Zack on the ID though.

 

[cnycharles]

I've had someone else tell me that they thought they were psycodes. I also thought they were a bit small for grandiflora, but Jerry said that they were a fair amount larger last year. In New York I've never seen psycodes this early and other spots like in the ithaca/cortland area the psycodes aren't open, though the grandiflora there were full about a week before and this spot is fairly high elevation. In any case it was unusual to find purple fringed orchids in this kind of spot at this time of year. Jerry won't care which purple fringed it is so if I tell him that others think it's psycodes he'll be fine with it

there were some huge grandiflora near lake como but I wasn't able to go back that far away to get some pictures

 

[cnycharles]

These rain covered flowers helped me feel a little cooler while looking at them

About the identification, it's entirely possible these are hybrids of the two. We looked at pictures of this year's flowers and the outside of the flower says grandiflora while the pollinia, like zack mentions looks like psycodes. I'd stated this before, also because of the 'intermediate' flowering time and because friend Matt young said he'd seen similar flowers in bear swamp where there are both lesser and greater. They definitely are not p shriveri which we briefly thought they might be (frilly purple fringed, likely past introgression with p lacera then speciation over time