Striped Coralroot / Corallorhiza striata

This is an old macro photo from 4 June 2010. Just not getting time to go through all the photos I've been taking recently, but had put aside this image when I was backing-up and deleting photos from my hard drive. Haven't seen any Striped Coralroot yet this year, just the Early Coralroot. Photo of this tiny, wild Orchid taken at the fairly new Glenbow Ranch Provincial Park - we had been allowed to botanize there a long time before the park was opened to the public.

"Corallorhiza striata is a species of orchid known by the common names striped coralroot and hooded coralroot. This flowering plant is native to much of North America, especially Canada and the northern and western United States.[1] It is a member of the coniferous understory flora, where it lives in the layer of decaying plant matter on the ground obtaining nutrients from fungi via mycoheterotrophy.

Like other coralroot orchids, it has reduced leaves and no chlorophyll and relies upon its parasitism of the fungi for sustenance. This coralroot has an erect stem which may be red, pink, purple, or yellow-green to almost white. It is mostly made up of an inflorescence of orchid flowers. Each flower is an open array of sepals and similar-looking petals which may be pink or yellowish and have darker pink or maroon stripes. Inside the flower is a column formed from the fusion of male and female parts, which may be spotted with purple or red. The fruit is a capsule one or two centimeters long." From Wikipedia.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corallorhiza_striata