Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Storm Damaged Orchid

The lone Blue Jay Barrens Yellow Lady’s Slipper Orchid sent up two stalks this year and managed to produce three full blooms.

It’s hard to consider a population as being stable when there is just a single individual involved.  As in the past, I’ve been searching to discover another of this species somewhere on the property.  No luck so far.

This plant manages to send up at least one flowering stalk each year.  Unfortunately, it seems a normal occurrence for disaster to befall the plant before it can develop a seed pod.  The flowers and top of plant have been eaten on several occasions, a large limb fell and crushed the single flower that developed that year, a strange wilting disease shriveled up the flowers another year.  It always seems to be something.  This year it was a particularly violent wind storm.

This flower lost its slipper completely.

A neatly storm cleaved slipper makes it easy to view the interior pattern.

Only one of the three flowers was unscathed.  So far, the plants have only had to contend with a single disaster per year.  Though that doesn’t mean they are now really safe.

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