June 14 A New Orchid

I joined the naturalist this afternoon for a walk through the Arboretum's Grady Tract and listened closely as she casually rattled off the names of some fifty plant species over the course of our two hour tour. Many of those were not even flowering but were identified by their leaves alone. In the middle of the Tract, the West Knoll opened up to a lake of needle grass, spiderwort, and lupines that have already gone to seed and no longer dazzle with their blues and purples. A few young ones appreciated the butterflies and bees hunting nectar on low flowers on our sides and a breeze shivered the needle grass in silver waves. Further along to the Greene Prairie we traveled across a narrow boardwalk and came to a small metal enclosure, much like the ones used to protect saplings from deer. In front of it were a handful of pink grass orchids (Calopogon tuberosus), these irregular flowers with long white beards at the top and an arrow curling up and out. While many orchids require very specific environmental conditions to thrive making them seem rare, they are actually the second largest plant family on earth, with over 10,000 individual species! Henry Greene, the UW mycologist who spent twenty years planting Greene Prairie, was especially interested in growing orchids since they have tiny spore-like seeds that need to partner with soil fungi to grow healthfully. If I haven't already said so, almost every native plant growing in the Arboretum is human-planted or the descendent of a human planting. These grass pinks are growing in a fen at the edge of the prairie in very wet, sandy, acidic soils, and should be flowering for a few weeks if you'd like to see them.