A great day for native orchids in the Pisgah National Forest, Brevard, North Carolina — 2019-07-26

On Thursday evening, Walter Ezell and I returned back to Greenville, South Carolina from 4 days at our mountain cabin in Elk Park, North Carolina. I was acutely aware that I might have just missed the second (and most significant) seasonal bloom cycle of Triphora trianthophoros or Three-birds orchid in the Pisgah National Forest near Brevard, North Carolina. The first thing I did upon returning home was to open my laptop and check the morning low temperature readings at one of the amateur weather stations in the immediate area of the orchids. I’ve mentioned on previous reports concerning the Three-birds orchids that the flowers bloom according to a fairly predictable schedule:

If the morning low temperatures drop by at least 3 degrees (F) over a two day period, then 48 hours later, there should be a bloom cycle.

It happens frequently enough, that I consider it “predictable”. Because it is about a 2-hour drive for me to see and photograph the plants, I want to be fairly certain that they will be in bloom. I will show a graph of the morning temperatures below:

Three-birds orchid

It’s obvious that I like the ones with pink/purple sepals…

As I just mentioned, I get the morning low temperatures from a website called, https://www.wunderground.com. “Wuderground” stands for “weather underground”, a name which I have yet to figure out.

According to Wikipedia, “Weather Underground is a commercial weather service providing real-time weather information over the Internet. Weather Underground provides weather reports for most major cities across the world on its website, as well as local weather reports for newspapers and websites. Its information comes from the National Weather Service (NWS), and over 250,000 personal weather stations (PWS). The website is available in many languages, and customers can access an ad-free version of the site with additional features for an annual fee. Weather Underground is owned by The Weather Company, a subsidiary of IBM.”

In any case, I use the temperature values from the amateur weather station labeled, “Deerlake Village – KNCBREVA15”. It is the closest one to the Three-birds orchid location I visit frequently. There is a wealth of information on this site including a graph of temperatures, dew points, wind speed, rainfall, as well as current conditions for each weather station. There is also a map of all of the available weather station locations in the area enabling you to choose the best station for your needs.

I usually prepare a graph of the morning low temperatures to figure out when the orchids will be in bloom. Here is my graph of low temperatures for July 11 (when I began recording the temperatures this year) until July 26, the date of the second bloom cycle:

Pay particular attention to the red boxes on the graph. These boxes highlight the days when the temperature dropped at least 3 degrees (F) over a 2-day period. Then 48 hours later, there should be a bloom cycle (marked with a light blue circle). The first cycle, which is usually a minor one with few blooms, was on July 16. The major cycles are the second and third ones. There may be as many as 5 cycles during the bloom season, but the latter ones are minor due to the fact that most of the buds have already opened on prior bloom cycles.

The flowers usually begin opening around 9:00 am and begin closing around 3:00 pm. Each flower will open for only one day, and for generally only 5-6 hours. After that, they close and wither. Seed capsules can be seen within a week or so. Although I have seen small Halictid bees pollinating the orchid flowers, I understand that the flowers actually may be self-pollinating, which makes sense, noting that almost every flower produces a seed capsule.

On the day I visited, July 26, there were many hundreds of flowering orchid plants scattered in the open woods. The large majority of plants were scattered singles and pairs of plants, but I also found some larger groups of 10-20 plants. Here are images of the largest group I found:

Note (upper right photo): See the seed capsules already forming from the first bloom cycle of 10 days prior to this photograph.

When I arrived at the site, I wanted to scope out the plants before I began photographing them. They prefer the damp, open woods in an area I’ll describe as several acres in size. I had no sooner stooped down to examine a particular plant when I saw a woman approaching. Turns out that she was a friend of the person who had originally discovered the location. She and her husband had driven all the way from Durham, North Carolina (a 4-hour trip), hoping that she was calculating the bloom date correctly using the morning low temperatures as a guide. Well, she was on the money! I also met another husband and wife team whom I had seen up there before. They arrived in the afternoon just as the flowers were beginning to close, but they were still able to get some good photographs.

All totaled, I probably took a hundred images of these wonderful but tiny orchids. Here are some additional shots of the flowering plants which show the different grouping arrangements and color forms present at this site:

After spending a couple of hours wandering in the woods, looking for photographic opportunities, I decided to head up the road a bit to see if another couple of orchid species were in bloom. This is a roadside site where Spiranthes lacera var. gracilis or Northern Slender Ladies’-tresses orchid and Platanthera ciliaris or Yellow Fringed orchid can be found. They are usually in bloom around the same time of year as the Three-birds orchids, so I was hoping to see both of them on this trip.

I arrived at the site and parked my truck on a sandy pull-off. The orchids are found under a power line right-of way which is usually kept clear of thick vegetation. This year, however, there was dense vegetation on the roadside. But, I still managed to locate a dozen or so flowering plants of the Northern Slender Ladies’-tresses orchid. The bright white flowers with a green throat are usually arranged in a spiraling fashion (tight or loose) around an exceedingly thin stem, which proves to offer quite the challenge while trying to photograph them even in the slightest breeze. Here is a selection of the plants I found on this visit:

The other orchid species that is found along this same roadside is Platanthera ciliaris or Yellow Fringed orchid. This year, they appeared to be getting a late start, because out of the several dozen plants I found, only a handful had open flowers. The remainder were in tight bud:

Here is a shot taken from above one of the plants:

After finishing at this roadside site, I went back to the Three-birds orchid site to photograph a couple of other orchid species: Tipularia discolor or Crane-fly orchid and Goodyera pubescens or Downy Rattlesnake Plantain orchid. Unfortunately, the Downy Rattlesnake Plantain orchid species was about done for the season. I did manage to find one plant with a few fairly fresh flowers:

However, the Crane-fly orchid was in full force at the Three-birds orchid site. There were hundreds of plants, some just poking out of the ground, and some in full bloom. Given the flower color and its 3D presentation, it’s a challenge to photograph it sufficiently against a background in which it blends so well. Here are a few shots of this mysterious orchid:

I saw several other Summer wildflowers on my visit, but I’ll just stick to the orchids for this blog post.

The flora in the Pisgah National Forest in Transylvania County, North Carolina never disappoints. The variety of wildflowers one sees during the Spring, Summer, and Fall, rivals those found in almost any other spot in the Southeast. Fortunately for me, it’s only a couple of hours away. This area also includes a portion of one of my favorite wildflower locations: The Blue Ridge Parkway. I know that I repeat myself a lot in my blog posts, but I still have an awesome wonder when I’m in the presence of such an array of incredible and amazing natural beauty.

I’m planning a future trip or two to the Carolina coastal plain to photograph the mid-Summer flora which includes a handful of orchids species and other bright and colorful wildflowers.

Stay tuned…

–Jim