RHH's photos with the keyword: fairy slipper

The Fairy Slipper is Washington's most well-known orchid, but few know that we have two varieties of this orchid, the Eastern Fairy Slipper, shown here, with a yellow "beard", and the Western Fairy Slipper with a white "beard". This example was photographed in north-central Washington and the hair-like decoration is a wisp of lichen that has fallen on the flower and which I did not bother to remove.

We are still traveling and dependent on stops with internet for posting and commenting. Today we are in Florence, Oregon, and headed south to northern California. We've been stopping often to photograph Oregon's beautiful coastline and lighthouses and to explore the tide pools, so we have made very slow progress. We spent the morning stopping around Cape Perpetua and hiking to the Haceta Head lighthouse and stopping at the Darlingtonia Natural Area north of Florence where we saw and photographed the Cobra Lilies that grow there.. The weather started gray and cloudy but has turned sunny and warm, though windy. This photo is from last week's orchid-hunting trip and is of the Eastern Fairy Slipper. The Western Fairy Slipper is found only west of the Rockies, but the Eastern is found all across the USA except a small area west of the Cascades. The Western Fairy Slipper's and the Eastern's ranges overlap where this was photographed and I stopped hoping to find the natural hybrid of the two. There were very few Fairy Slippers blooming this year in a place where there are usually hundreds of them, but I did find one hybrid.

The Eastern Fairy Slipper, Calypso bulbosa var. americana, blooms across the USA and Canada and is distinguished from the western variety, which has a much more limited range, by the color of the "beard," here yellow and in the western variety white. These were photographed in north central Washington.

I've been away the last three days orchid hunting and leading one of their field trips for the Washington Native Plant Society's annual study weekend. I left Friday and visited a site in north-central Washingon to look for this plant. I found a few in bloom but they had had a windstorm sometime past and many trees were down and so I had to do a lot of scrambling and bushwacking and since it was raining came back soaked and chilled and for all that only found about six flowers open, a disappointment. Went on to the other side of the Cascades where it was hot and dry, the weather on both sides of the mountains the opposite of what we usually experience. There I hiked high in the mountains to find the Western Fairy Slipper, which, due to the weather was nearly finished along with all the other early again orchids. Again, after hiking around 10 miles I found only a few flowers but enjoyed the hike anyway. I hiked the Thunder Creek trail, a hike I had not done for several years. The following day I scouted for orchids on Fidalgo and Whidbey Islands in preparation for my field trip and visited eight different sites, but due to the strange weather only found a few flowers in bloom. One species was just starting to bloom, one was all but finished and the third was blooming but I found few plants where there are usually a lot. The very hot and dry weather on the west side of the Cascades has meant an early wildfire season and has interfered with many of the wildflowers. Saturday I led my field trip to see what native orchids were blooming but also visited the Pacific Rim Environmental Institute and saw their piece of original prairie and the large area of prairie they are working on restoring. We saw some unusual and rare wildflowers there and between those and the orchids, had a very good day. I left soon after the field trip finished and headed home arriving home around 10:30 pm. Had a very busy few days and saw in total seven different orchids and two other varieties. There are two varieties of this orchid, this with the yellow "beard" found all across the northern US and Canada, but not west of the Cascades, the other, which I'll post tomorrow, found only in the west. Where the ranges of the two overlap there is a hybrid of the two varieties, though it is rare and seldom found. This, then, is the Eastern Fairy Slipper, the more common and widely ranging variety and distinguished not only by the yellow "beard" but by the white (or pink) and unspotted front of the lip.

These are Western Fairy Slippers, one of the first orchids to bloom in our area. This one is found from the east coast of Canada and the USA as far as the Cascades, while the other variety is found only west of the Rockies. In the photo the flower in back is nearly finished though they had just started blooming at the location in which I found them. It was raining there, too, and I came back to the car cold and chilled.

Photographed in the rain in north-central Washington, this is the Eastern Fairy Slipper, found across the northern USA and Canada but not west of the Cascades. I was out orchid hunting last week and found these just beginning to bloom.

This is the Eastern Fairy Slipper, found across the northern US and Canada but not west of the Cascades. It is distinguished from the western variety by the yellow "beard" and the white lip. I photographed these in the rain at a site where they were just beginning to bloom.

It is nearly native orchid season once again and we hope to be out viewing them by the middle of March. We missed the whole season last year and so are especially eager for the wildflowers and orchids this year. Here is a natural hybrid of the two varieties of the Fairy Slipper that are found in North American, the Eastern Fairy Slipper, found across the continent and the Western Fairy Slipper found only west of the Rocky Mountains.

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.

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.

There are two North American varieties of the Fairy Slipper, The Eastern Fairy Slipper, Calypso bulbosa var. americana, found from the Cascades eastward to the east coast of the USA and Canada, and the Western Fairy Slipper, Calypso bulbosa var. occidentalis, found only west of the Rockies and in the Cascades. The former has a yellow beard and an unspotted lip, the latter a white beard and a spotted lip. The ranges of these two varieties overlap in a narrow area west of the Rockies. Occasionally they hybridize and produce Kostiuk's Hybrid Fairy Slipper with a yellow beard and a spotted lip. We had looked for this hybrid three years running without success, but finally found it this spring, two plants, this and another which was starting to go by. We had two GPS locations and found it at one of those locations and then another flower simply by examining hundreds of blooming plants along the trail we were following. The link to a blog post below has other photos of this hybrid as well as photos of both parents for comparison. On another note, this photo was taken with my new camera, the Canon 7D Mark II, and was in fact among the first photos taken with the camera. The 7D Mark II has features that my old 7D did not have and that camera had been through six years of hard use on trails while hiking and backpacking and had nearly reached the limit of its life. It is now an emergency backup. Though this photo was not taken with that lens, I also purchased (as a package) a new lens, a Canon 18-135mm, IS STM f3.5-5.6 lens to replace what was the junkiest lens Canon ever produced, the 17-85mm IS USM lens, a lens that was in constant need of repair and which Canon has never acknowledged as being poorly engineered, though it has one of the worst records of any Canon lens ever produced.

This variety of Calypso bulbosa, the Fairy Slipper grows all across North America but not west of the Cascades. It is, in my opinion, more colorful than the other variety that does grow west of the Cascades, and only there.

I have a few more pictures to post from our Winchester Mountain hike last summer, but thought I would intersperse them with some pictures of native orchids taken more recently. This the "albino" form of the Western Fairy Slipper, with none of the darker coloring of that species. It is quite rare and we found only two of them this summer in all the different places where we found Fairy Slippers. The ordinary form is shown in the inset. This was photographed with my Canon 100mm macro lens.

Here's another photo of the Western Fairy Slipper, Calypso bulbosa var. occidentalis, photographed in Washington Park. The white "beard" or this variety is very evident in the photo and is one of the distinguishing characteristics of this variety (the other North American variety has a yellow beard).

Another picture of the Fairy Slipper, Calypso bulbosa. This is the Western Fairy Slipper, with a white beard (just visible) and a brown-spotted lip. It is the first of our native orchids to bloom and is in bloom already at the lowest elevations. We were out yesterday and visited three different places, looking for Fairy Slippers and whatever else we could find. We found a few of these at one of the locations.

The Calypsos (Calypso bulbosa) or Fairy Slippers are the first of our native orchids to bloom and they are in bloom one again! My wife and I went to Washington Park in Anacortes Monday to see and photograph the Fawn Lilies (Erythronium oregonum) but learned from a friend that the Fairy Slippers were also in bloom, quite early for them. We found them well into their bloom season and spent the day photographing them and the other wildflowers for which the park is famous. This is the Western Fairy Slipper, easily distinguished from the eastern variety by the white beard and brown-spotted lip.

These pictures are from Saturday's hike (5/2/09) near Yelm, Washington. This is the flower we especially went to see. There were hundreds of them growing above the falls. The morning was quite wet and rainy, but worthwhile. In Explore May 3, 2009, #462.

Another shot of a fairy slipper.