Howdy — I’ll put the eye candy right up front starting with the cover shot looking down over a wild native Orchid. Here’s the same plant sideview — Chapman's Fringed Orchid.
It was a cloudy day in Baker County just west of Jacksonville, Fl. Rain had been stuck over Gainesville to the south for a few days and expected to move toward us. We were visiting a huge expanse of... not restoration, not monoculture pine plantation like it was 20 years before, typical Slash pines giving way to Longleaf. Timber, hunting, growing stuff everywhere and enjoying it all — multiple uses to pay the bills as the owners said, but really to share what they learned. Lovely day.
Here’s the first orchid I saw as I stepped off the hay wagon - 4 of us from the Magnolia chapter of FL Native Plant Society drove 100 miles east on I-10 to see the endangered Orchids and meeting up with other chapters from the area.
For any Orchid enthusiasts this is what we saw.
Platanthera chapmanii - Chapman's Fringed Orchid
Platanthera ciliaris - Yellow Fringed Orchid
Platanthera cristata - Crested Fringed Orchid
The first is state-listed Endangered, the others Threatened. They have a wide range but lost their native Flatwoods habitat to timber and us humans. Roadsides with a wet ditches and pine stands nearby have remnant colonies. The differences between these species were slight — the angle of the 3 sepals and the fringe on the petal. I should have listened closer….
Also liking these wet roadsides — Rhexia — Meadow Beauty
White was not as common
I got a few more lucky shots — you know, where you don’t see the bug till later.
and another spider
This is interesting — don’t think the fly will go under and into the Pitcher plant but the tiny beetle is a perfect sucker for the trap.
Eastern Black Swallowtails, just like home eating something similar to the parsley growing for them. Another bog plant.
and that’s it for this big trip. Woo-hoo I left my county — and today I drove up into Georgia (about 10 miles) to see friends and discuss the vegetation thriving on their hurricane blasted bluff on the south shore of Lake Seminole. She will be pulling weedier plants for awhile.
shoot... publish and go — I got a big wasp flying around my desk. Ok quart jar slip of paper lid...