Tangled Branches: Cultivated
happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia
Friday, January 22, 2010
Winter Orchid Foliage
Couldn't think of a catchy title.
What does this look like to you? A pile of sticks? (Say yes.)
But let's look more closely.
There's something green and growing beneath the sticks.
It's a Downy Rattlesnake Plantain orchid, or Goodyera pubescens to its botanist friends. The pile of sticks is my doing. In the fall of 2008, I found a single Goodyera pubescens in the woods. When I went back a few days later to look for it, it was gone. Deer? I don't know, but the deer are getting all the blame for any missing plants lately. So this fall, I was surprised and happy to find two plants nearby. And wondered how best to protect them. Well, maybe not best, but adequate. So my reasoning was that a loosely woven cover of sticks might hide the tasty plants from any casually-nibbling herbivores, but let in enough light to keep the plants alive. So far, it seems to have worked.
A story of mistakes.
My fingers almost cannot help typing Goodyeara instead of Goodyera, and that is what I did when I wrote about this plant over a year ago. The genus name has nothing to do with tires, but is instead named for John Goodyer - an English botanist who lived from about 1592 to 1664. You can read all about him on Wikipedia or elsewhere on the internet, but a lesser-known fact, I think, is that the naming of the genus was a mistake. It seems that Robert Brown (famous Scottish botanist), wanting to name a plant after Goodyer, assigned the name Goodyera repens to an orchid found in the north of England and in Scotland that he believed was the same as an orchid described by Goodyer which is found in the south of England. His reference for this belief was Gerard's Herbal, which had been revised by a friend of Goodyer's (Thomas Johnson). Johnson erroneously attached a drawing of Goodyera repens (the northern orchid known to Brown) to a description of Epipactus palustris (the southern orchid known to Goodyer).
My typing mistake could have a basis in fact however. It seems that the surname Goodyear, forever linked with tires in my mind, is probably the same as the surname Goodyer. Charles Goodyear may or may not have invented the process of vulcanization, whereby natural rubber is converted into a material suitable for tires (and other things), but one of his relatives writes the following in a genealogy of the Goodyear family:
But back to winter orchid foliage.
Lately, I've been finding more and more Cranefly Orchid (Tipularia discolor) foliage in various places in the woods. I stumbled across this single leaf while out with the camera a week ago, far from any previous discoveries.
Way back last summer, I meant to post something about the flowers of the Cranefly Orchid. The patch I found a couple of winters ago bloomed, and the flowers were not eaten, this past August but I had a terrible time trying to get a good photo. I never did get a good photo, but these are some of the least bad.
Well, it is an orchid - I think you can see the family resemblance - but very plain compared to many of its cousins. The flowers are practically invisible due to their size, coloring, and habitat. They're so perfectly camouflaged in the woods that if you didn't know to look for them you probably wouldn't notice them.
Maybe next summer I'll have some pictures of the flowers of Goodyera pubescens as well.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Wild Orchids and Other Fairy Tales
Last weekend, I discovered a third species of orchid growing wild in the woods. Or should I say orchid foliage? Because that's all I've seen of them so far.
This one has foliage attractive enough to stand on its own even if it never flowers. I'm fairly sure it's Goodyeara pubescens aka Downy Rattlesnake Plantain, on the right next to Partridgeberry (Mitchella repens). I can't watch these every minute to see when they flower, although it might be fun to try. I don't think the the suspected Ladyslipper bloomed this year (but I may have missed it), and the Cranefly Orchid bloomed and was eaten before I got to see it. And this newly discovered one is said to bloom anytime from June to August, so it'll be a while before I can hope to see any flowers there. But I believe there will be flowers eventually.
A garden fairy tale dropped into my inbox this morning. I get weekly emails from Dover books with sample pages to download, and one of the books featured this week was Once Upon a Time...: A Treasury of Classic Fairy Tale Illustrations. This illustration intrigued me.
The caption reads "Don't drink!" cried out the little princess, springing to her feet; "I would rather marry a gardener!" I'd never heard of "The Twelve Dancing Princesses", but if it involves princesses marrying gardeners it must be a good story. You can read a version of it at SurLaLune, but in that version the hero is a soldier, not a gardener. Searching online, I found a snippet from the version for which our illustration was created. It originally appeared in a book titled In Powder and Crinoline by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, illustrated by Kay Nielsen. Some of the other stories appear to involve gardening too - "Felicia: or, The Pot of Pinks" and "The Czarina's Violet". Has anyone read this book? I don't know any of these fairy tales and I'd love to know more about the book. Continuing my search, I found that the gardener version of the story appeared in The Red Fairy Book by Andrew Lang, but the language isn't quite as poetic as the snippet from the Quiller-Couch book.
And staying with the subject of fantasy, another Kay Nielsen illustration from the Quiller-Couch book looks just like fantasy me standing in front of my fantasy cottage in my fantasy garden. Well...maybe there would be fewer cabbages...
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Into the Woods
A few pictures from the central Virgnia woods last week. I was startled to see a Vaccinium in bloom. I believe this is a deerberry (Vaccinium stamineum) and it normally blooms in late April or early May. We have several wild Vacciniums in the woods and although I've seen berries on some of them I've never seen a deerberry berry.
I never posted an update on the Cranefly Orchid I discovered last winter. I did look for the flowers in July (or was it August?), and found instead the stump of a chewed-off flower stalk. But the leaves are sprouting again and there may be even more of them than I saw last year. Here's one emerging leaf:
With the recent rain, the mushrooms are sprouting like...oh never mind. I have no idea what any of these are, but some of them are attractive and that's fine because all I intend to do is look at them.
And lastly, this is the biggest Partridgeberry I've ever seen. Where are the partridges?
Labels: berries, mushrooms, orchids
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Updates, a Life Bird, and Potager's Progress
It occurs to me lately that much of the good stuff on this blog happens in the comments, and as a result, doesn't get the prominence it deserves. Also, I tend to write of mystery plants, birds, bugs, etc. and then don't update the post when I learn the ID. Soooooo.....this post is to tie up some loose ends.
Thanks to bek, I now know that the mystery oak galls are Wool Sower Oak Galls.
Thanks to the kind folks at bugguide.net, I believe my first bizzare-o insect of the year was the caterpillar of a Red-Spotted Purple butterfly.
Thanks to Squirrel, I knew that yesterday (or was it Thursday?) was International Migratory Bird Day. I celebrated it by doing some front-porch birding and saw a life bird. But Ms. Smarty-pants here was so confident of the ID that she failed to observe all the field marks and now is uncertain. When I first saw the all-blue bird in the treetops, I immediately thought Indigo Bunting, and kept right on thinking that until just before I lost sight of the bird. In those last few seconds, I thought I saw a rusty red streak on the flanks. Hmmm, well, the Blue Grosbeak has a rusty red wing bar, and furthermore, this seemed larger than a finch-sized bird. So now I'm about 70% sure that I saw a Blue Grosbeak, with a 30% chance that it really was an Indigo Bunting. Either way, it's a life bird for me.
Other birds of note yesterday were Great Crested Flycatcher very close to the house in the morning, and in the afternoon by the vegetable garden 2 Pileated Woodpeckers in some kind of altercation, with one pursuing another across an open field. They're even more awesome in flight with red crested head and bold black and white wings.
Still no ID on the big mystery seed pod, but I found another just like it while working on the vegetable garden yesterday and ta da! - it has at least one seed in it. I'm going to plant it and see what sprouts.
Wild orchid foliage? This is what I noticed last weekend, and recently found another one some distance away. I was waiting for a good sunny day to take a photo, but had to settle for using the flash.
And when I said the ditch had turned blue with Salvia lyrata? This is what I meant.
Lastly, Happy Birthday to my vegetable/herb/cutting garden and/or nursery bed. I'm going to keep calling it a potager. Early in May last year, we starting digging. One year later, we're still digging, but there's visible progress. We're messing up the symmetrical layout this year by adding a column of beds along one side and potato bins on the other. I plan to bring it back to some kind of symmetry, but probably not this year. And I've just discovered that the lower part of the garden has a drainage problem. Last year, no rain, no drainage problem. This year, lots of rain, big drainage problem. The sage, rosemary, horehound and shallots are all drowning, but the garlic doesn't seem much affected. Four rosemarys were supposed to anchor the corners of the design, but one got chewed off last fall and the drowning one looks like it's on the way out. I either need to fix the drainage problem or rethink my design, or both. (Disclosure: I cropped out the poor suffering waterlogged plants on the left side of the photo.) 
A few closeups from the potager:
The Mexican mint marigold either self-sowed or lived through the winter sheltered by Provencal thyme.
We're going to have some very large garlic bulbs this year.
The rue is just starting to bloom.
The black swallowtail caterpillars are back! This year I hope they come visit when they're grown up.
Labels: birds, butterflies, oak galls, orchids, potager
Monday, January 28, 2008
Cranefly Orchid
Wild orchids! I was so excited to find this foliage, then so disappointed to find out what the flowers look like.
Tipularia discolor is known as the Cranefly Orchid, presumably because the flowers look like craneflies? Nothing like big beautiful tropical orchids, or even some of our showier native orchids - just a brownish-purplish stalk with small greenish-brownish-purplish flowers. Perfect for making itself invisible in the woods.
I'm not sure what made me think orchid when I saw this. I was in the midst of whacking down greenbriar where it had resprouted after last winter's whackage; happened to look down and there it was. If it was growing there before last winter, it would have been impossible to see because it was right in the middle of one of the biggest greenbriar tangles. This past summer, I was busy with the vegetable garden and didn't venture into the woods much, but I need to put a reminder on my calendar to go look for the flowers later this year.
Updated January 30: I discovered after I posted this that it fit in with the Week 2 Theme of Elizabeth Joy's Wildflowers in Winter. Visit her to find out what other wildflower fans are doing to mark time until spring.
Labels: orchids, wildflowers
