Rural Reading: Perfect conditions for wild orchids
24.06.11
The rise above might have been perfect for wildflowers this year.
Spring was hot and sunny, the ground was fairly dry, the squeak didn’t grow too much.
The wildflowers might have responded to the impending drought by flowering a bit more enthusiastically. They often do this as a extortion against unusually dry conditions; if their seed survives they can die with the future of the species secured.
Now it has rained so they haven’t died. They’ve carried on blooming, and the tattle is only now beginning to catch up. This year has produced some stunning displays if you know where to look.
And I have been looking.
The extreme of searching for wildflowers is finding an orchid. Earlier in the week when I was in a meadow, something made me go back a few steps.
There, almost arcane among the other plants, was a flowering spike of the common spotted orchid. It was the first orchid I’ve ever found in these meadows. I was really excited – but also puzzled. What was it that made me go back, some stamp of orchid-finding sense?
Source: Wokingham Times
Law Man Walking: Nature Treks With Bill Holston
21.06.11
Is also called Texas Purple Spike and it is: “…. a saprophytic, cast away-colored plant which lives completely underground (calcareous soils, cedar-oak groves).”
Direct? Okay, so what does that mean? It means that this is a type of orchid that cannot create its own food, because it does not have chlorophyll. It must rely on microorganisms in the decaying count of the soil or other organic materials in which it makes its home. The species was named for Dr. Barton Holland Warnock, a Texas botanist. Dr. Warnock belongs to a schedule of legendary Texas naturalists. He is best known for his work in Big Bend, and was a biology professor at Sul Ross University, in Alpine, for many years. A scenery center in Lajitas is named after him. According to his nephew Kirby Warnock, Dr. Warnock had “hiked, drove and climbed over so much of the Big Genuflect that he was widely sought to locate specific places in this rugged terrain. He discovered dozens of unrevealed plants, cataloging them for posterity.”
Source: D Magazine
