Native Orchids - Western Washington

We saw a few native orchids on our recent backpacking excursion, this near our camp at Noisy Creek. The orchid is the Western or Merten's Coralroot. The Coralroots are leafless and without chlorophyll and live in a symbiotic relationship with a fungus (mycoheterotrophic).

The Heart-leaved Twayblade, one of our native orchids, is a tiny plant that would probably not even be noticed unless one was looking for it. This example was photographed along the Baker Lake trail in the North Cascades.

The Western Coralroot, Corallorhiza mertensiana, or Merten's Coralroot, is one of thirteen species found in North America, and one of four found here in Washington State. Of the four it is my favorite because it comes in all different colors, color combinations and patterns, some of which can be seen in the album in which this photo is found.

The Coralroots are leafless, achlorophyllous orchids that live, via a fungus, off decaying material in the soil. This, the Striped Coralroot, Corallorhiza striata, is the most beautiful of the species we have here in Washington. The photo was taken during a dry spring, thus the aphids on this plant, as on many of the wildflowers that year.

Also known as Merten's Coralroot, this species is found only in the Pacific Northwest but often found in abundance there. Like all the Coralroots it is leafless and without chlorophyll, often growing on dark forest floors. These were photographed on Fidalgo Island in the San Juan's while I was leading a group from the local orchid society to see some of the native orchids there. They were just beginning to bloom and are early like everything else this year. The place where these were photographed has only this dark purple form of the species and is the only place we ever found this form. The species comes in a rainbow of colors, white, pink, yellow, tan, but only there in this beautiful red-purple.

The Western Fairy Slippers, the earliest of our native orchids, are coming to the end of their season down at sea level but will continue to bloom for more than month up in the mountains. This example was photographed on Fidalgo Island and shows a flower that is either very pale in color or one that is fading, since they turn nearly white after being pollinated.

Here's a native orchid we found Monday while out doing wildflower photography. Usually we find this in the mountains later in the season, but there is one location at sea level where we always find a few plants of the Heart-leaved Twayblade, Listera cordata var. nephrophylla, now known as Neottia cordata and the same species that can be found in Europe. It has a plain green form and this reddish form and it is a tiny thing, in this case only six inches tall (15 cm) with 1 cm flowers.

We were out for a while yesterday doing wildflower photography on Whidbey and Fidalgo Islands. We found three native orchids in bloom along with numerous other wildflowers. Some of the native orchids we found were Fairy Slippers and among them we found two rare "albinos" without any of the normal pink and mahogany coloring. This is one of them. The other had no color at all, not even the green color at the back of the lip. A normal flower is included in the inset for comparison.

Last Thursday turned out to be a decent day and as my wife put it, "we flew the coop." We found a lot of the early spring wildflowers along the coast including these first orchids of the season. We did not find a lot of them since they are just starting to bloom, a bit earlier than usual, but it was nice to see them again. They are always the first orchids and among the first wildflowers to bloom in our area. They are the Western Fairy Slipper, found only in a relatively small area west of the Rocky Mountains. The Eastern variety is found across the USA and Canada and has a large yellow spot on the lip.