north american native orchid journal - at The Culture Sheet

Empiricist: JEWELS IN THE MOST UNLIKELY PLACES
Not only Spiranthes, but Platanthera, the fringed and rein
orchises, Calopogon, many of the grass pinks, Sacoila, the leafless
beaked orchid, and even some species of Listera and Liparis, the
twayblades, like the roadsides’ expanses for a home.
I have seen the following growing along the highway, often
in mixed colonies:
• Florida and the southeast:
Sacoila (FL), Calopogon, Platanthera, Spiranthes, Gymnadeniopsis
• Northeast:
Spiranthes, Pogonia. Gymnadeniopsis, Epipactis, Platanthera, and
even pink lady’s-slippers!
• Northwest:
Spiranthes, Platanthera, Piperia, a stray Calypso and mountain
lady’s-slippers
The prairies of southern Manitoba amazed us with plants
of Platanthera praeclara, the western prairie fringed orchis,
extending from the prairies into the roadside shoulders and
ditches, often with the green rein orchises, Platanthera huronensis
and P. aquilonis. So much of what you see in both Newfoundland
and Alaska are roadside plants, in part because there are so few
roads to the interior that the main roads are where you tend to be!
Some even stranger places I’ve seen orchids growing along
the highway were Spiranthes casei, Case’s ladies-tresses, growing in
rip rap in Vermont, Listera borealis, northern twayblade, growing
in the gravel parking lot in Alberta near Lake Louise and Calypso
bulbosa var. occidentalis, western calypso, in northern California
growing under the redwoods right along and nearly within the
road!
Another unlikely habitat occurs at high elevations where
the weather can be harsh and unforgiving but in the mountain
meadows or tucked into small sheltered depressions on
windswept heights orchids find a niche! I have seen the rattail
adder’s-mouth orchids, Malaxis soulei, in August in the Huachuca
Mountain heights in Arizona and Cypripedium montanum, mountain
lady’s-slippers, gracing the roadsides in Radium Hot Springs,
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