Showing posts with label orchids. Show all posts
Showing posts with label orchids. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 03, 2011

Pink Lady Slipper


Pink Lady Slippers, Cypripedium acaule


As you may have guessed, it's Shawnee week!  After spending Flora-quest weekend at Shawnee State Forest and State Park, I've got plenty of images of amazing plants and animals to share.  I hope you enjoy!

Tom

 



Thursday, May 27, 2010

Ending Where I Began


Driving back from northeast Ohio today, I had one of those "ah-ha" moments, and it was all sparked by one little pink flower that grows in a fen in Portage County.

Exactly eleven years ago right now, I was preparing to start my conservation career with State of Ohio.  I had just been hired by Preserve Manager Emliss Ricks as a college intern.  I'd be assisting with the care of a system of State Nature Preserves across northeast Ohio.  I would come to learn that the preserves in this system harbored some of the rarest plants and animals in the state, and after a week on the job or so, I was hooked, and knew what I wanted to do the rest of my life.

The very first day in the field, Emliss brought me to a wonderful place called a fen.  And in this fen grew an orchid that grew nowhere else in Ohio. An orchid so rare that sometimes only one or two individual flowers are seen each year.  I knew this orchid was special, because people came drove two and half hours from Columbus just to see it.

Fast forward eleven years and I'm that person driving from Columbus.  Two years as a summer worker, two years of graduate school, and seven years working in the central office of the Division of Natural Areas and Preserves has flashed by like a lightning bolt.  I've had the fantastic opportunity to explore Ohio's most interesting natural areas.  And today I returned to where it all started.  And this day was my last day in the field as an employee of the Division of Natural Areas & Preserves.  Tomorrow, I move my office to the Olentangy Wildlife Research Station, where I'll begin a new page in my career with the Division of Wildlife.



The purpose of today's field outing, which I had scheduled long before I had figured out my moving date, was to document two other rare species- one called lesser panicled sedge and another called bog bluegrass. We needed updated information on these populations, and I chose late May to catch them when they were both easily viewable.  The orchid wouldn't be ready yet, or so I thought- I'd be about 10 days too early.


But as you can see, the orchid was blooming- everything is early this year and the Arethusa bulbosa was holding true to that pattern. And then it hit me on the drive back to Columbus.  I had ended my career in the Division of Natural Areas and Preserves exactly where it started 11 years ago...standing in a fen in portage county, admiring the beauty of the dragon's mouth orchid. 

Tom

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Shawnee- Baby Herps and an Orange Orchid- Camera Critters


Almost one week ago, I started this little adventure to Shawnee State Forest with the Ohio Heritage Naturalists, so I better finish it up- I'm sure most of you forgot where we left off- with the Liatris aspera, a beautiful blazing star.

We walked down and back a grassy forest trail that was full of the liatris, when I spotted a few of our naturalists on their knees, hunched over looking at something. Sure enough, it was a tiny, newly hatched five-lined skink, with a bright blue tail. We saw several of these tiny lizards throughout our adventure. Ray was kind enough to hold the skink for the camera.

I had noticed that not all of our naturalists joined us for this little side trip. Mind you, it was getting ridicuously hot by this point, and the humidity was up there as well. Jason and Weedpicker Cheryl said that it was actually cooler on the ground in this position. I'll let them explain it, but they were lined up like they were going somewhere on an imaginary roller coaster ride or something like that. I snapped the picture quickly, they were up and with us again in a flash.

Ahh, the beautiful view from picnic point. From this vantage, theOhio valley can be seen- Ohio on the left, and Kentucky on the right. You can just barely make out the river city of Portsmouth, Ohio, now a shadow of its once former self. It actually was home to a National Football League Franchise called the Portsmouth Spartans. The team left for Detroit in 1934- they're now known as the Detroit Lions.

In addition to the grand vistas, there was plenty of interest at a much smaller level at picnic point. A tiny eastern fence lizard was basking on one of our van's Goodyear tires. The "r" in Goodyear gives quite a size reference- these newly hatched lizards were really, really little.

Jenny Richards, the naturalist at Shawnee State Park, found several other eastern fence lizards, and as I promised Kelly, here she is holding one of these little reptiles. I'm sure we could have found many more, but we needed to pack up our vans and head back to Columbus.

However- We couldn't miss the opportunity to stop and see this botanical wonder- the yellow fringed orchid, thanks again to Jenny. I've seen this species one other time, I believe, in the Oak Openings west of the Toledo. What an amazing plant. More orange than yellow, it was a great way to end our day of botanizing and naturalizing.

Tom

See what we found during the first part of our Shawnee Trip

This is my Camera Critters post for this week.

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Today's Flowers- the Lily-Leaved Twayblade

I've had the opportunity to view and photograph this subtly colored, amazingly intricate orchid twice this year. It is native to the eastern deciduous forests. Isn't it quite stunning?

This is my contribution to this week's Today's Flowers meme.

Monday, February 25, 2008

14 Orchid Photographs to Brighten Your Winter



Yesterday morning, Megan and I toured the Franklin Park Conservatory in Columbus's Olde Towne East neighborhood. This beautiful Victorian era glasshouse and botanical conservatory exhibits orchids each winter. The conservatory also holds a large and impressive collection of Chihuly glass, which they have beautifully integrated throughout their artificial botanical wonderlands. More on Chihuly's works tomorrow, but this evening, I thought I would help everyone here in the Midwest escape from our winter doldrums. Snow, you may be coming, but in Columbus, we have a tiny piece of the tropics that can be enjoyed year round.















Tom