Western Spotted Coralroot

I was away all day hiking and orchid hunting and have a car rally and burger fry to go to tonight. Thus the delay in commenting for which I apologize.

A week ago we visited Sehome Hill Arboretum, which though called an arboretum is not planted, but is a 180 acre undeveloped park in Bellingham.

We were looking for native orchids there and found both Fairy Slippers and these Coralroots just starting to bloom along one of the trails.

These were so close to the trail that they were damaged, one spike broken off and a flower missing on the other but still worth photographing.

Coralroots are mycotrophic, leafless and without chlorophyll, living in a symbiotic relation with a fungi though which they feed.

This is the western variety of a species which ranges across the USA and Canada, Corallorhiza maculata var. occidentalis.

ronaldhanko-orchidhunter.blogspot.com/2013/05/sehome-hill...