RHH's photos with the keyword: crescent

On our recent trip to the Olympics we went to see some of the native orchids that were blooming in the park, especially the Piperias. This is Piperia elegans, the Elegant Piperia, and was photographed by East Beach near Crescent Lake in the north part of Olympic National Park. nativeorchidsofthepacificnorthwest.blogspot.com/2011/09/f... ronaldhanko-orchidhunter.blogspot.com/2011/09/olympic-nat...

Epipactis gigantea, one of our northwest native orchids is known as the Chatterbox Orchid because of its moveable lip which "chatters" in the slightest breeze. It is also known as the Stream Orchid because it grows in very wet areas, in this case on the edge of a lake. The movement and the location made photography in this case especailly difficult. We had to deal with the movement because there was a slight breeze the morning this photo was taken, and we had to kneel in the water to get the right angle on the flowers. These were photographed at Crescent Lake in Olympic National Park in a rather high use area with a beach. Sadly, one of the park staff had come through the area with a weedeater and had mowed most of them down so that only a few stems were untouched. nativeorchidsofthepacificnorthwest.blogspot.com/2011/09/e... ronaldhanko-orchidhunter.blogspot.com/2011/09/olympic-nat...

In Explore September 23, 2011, #260. Crescent Lake is in the northern part of Olympic National Park. We visited there in August and my wife took this picture at that time. I especially liked the perspective and the composition and thought it a fine picture. ronaldhanko-orchidhunter.blogspot.com/2011/09/olympic-nat...

We were up on the Old Blewett Road in eastern Washington several times recently and both times it was warm and sunny and the butterflies were everywhere. We had gone to see the orchids and the butterflies were an unexpected bonus. We managed to catch both in this shot. The Tall White Bog Orchis, Platanthera dilata var. dilatata is extremely fragrant and that in combination with the white flowers would suggest that butterflies such as these are the principle pollinators. In this case the butterfly's tongue can be seen reaching into the flower. There are two other varieties of this orchid, variety leucostachys and variety albiflora, distinguished by the length of the spur. In these flowers the spur is about equal in length to the lip as can be seen in the photo. In the other varieties the spur is longer or shorter. This was published as a two page center spread in the December 2012 issue of Orchids, the magazine of the American Orchid Society, along with a brief article on field photography. The photo was chosen from the AOS's photo of the week gallery. ronaldhanko-orchidhunter.blogspot.com/2012/08/old-blewett...