Great Plains Ladies'-tresses

 

Little white spires of orchid flowers dot the open gravelly substrate of the Lakeside Daisy State Nature Preserve in Ottawa County, Ohio. I was exploring some of the most interesting habitats of Lake Erie's western basin last Saturday, and almost on a whim, decided to stop at this site. I was with Shauna Weyrauch, an Ohio State University professor who studies Bobcats, and was introducing her to some of the region's rare plants.

We saw the Great Plains Ladies'-tresses (Spiranthes magnicamporum) before the car was even stopped. They were everywhere; a decided boom year, which happens with some orchids. There were dozens and dozens of plants, hundreds I am sure, if one scoured the preserve's 19 acres in its entirety.

A Great Plains Ladies'-tresses springs from the gravel. Nearly all of its botanical companions are rare, or at least not plants that one finds everywhere. In this photo, the orchid shares space with the federally threatened Lakeside Daisy (Tetraneuris herbacea), Slender Foxglove (Agalinis tenuifolia), and Bristle-leaved Sedge (Carex eburnea). The orchid is listed as Potentially Threatened in Ohio, a watch list category and one step below Threatened.

A close-up of the inflorescence and its beautiful flowers. Ladies'-tresses flowers look like they are crafted from confectioner's sugar. The overall look is enchanting, but to really appreciate these Lilliputs one must drop to the ground to best observe the 6-8-inch-tall spikes.

This map is courtesy of BONAP and shows the distribution of this aptly named orchid. As is true with many prairie and Great Plains species, their eastern terminus is in or around Ohio. The counties shaded in yellow denote rare status. Eleven Ohio counties are highlighted, but the little orchid is certainly extirpated from some of those. And there are precious few locales in the counties where it does remain.

Great Plains Ladies'-tresses

Not much time to post of late, nor run afield to produce new imagery. I am in the final stages of a book project - more on that in a later post - and deadline-driven tasks have taken much time of late.

So, here are two photos from an excursion to western Lake Erie back on September 29 (2022). I stopped by the Lakeside Daisy State Nature Preserve to visit with a rare (for Ohio) orchid.

Two flowering stems of Great Plains Ladies'-tresses (Spiranthes magnicamporum) rise from a rocky lunar landscape. The artificial alvars of formerly quarried sites on Ohio's Marblehead Peninsula are renowned for hosting the federally threatened Lakeside Daisy (Tetraneuris herbacea). In spite of the barren landscape features, this habitat hosts many other interesting plants, including a number of other rarities.

By late September, the flowers are waning but those in the upper reaches of the spike still looked good. There are nine Spiranthes species in Ohio - some say more, based on recent splits - and all are relatively elfin in dimensions. The little flowers look like botanical confectionaries, as if they were crafted with sugar granules. By now, the wee orchids have senesced into brownness as has most of our other flora, and the upper Midwest prepares for winter and botanical dormancy.

NOTE: The black background on the second image was obtained by slipping a piece of black velvet, mounted on cardboard, behind the subject. This is an easy noninvasive way of isolating plants from a cluttered background.