Deception - Simpson's Grass-Pink

Cross-pollination is most commonly achieved by wind or insect. Pollen from the male part of the flower is transferred to the female part of another flower of the same species. Insects are lured in with the promise of nectar and are the ambivalent dupes of this well orchestrated exchange of genetic material. Not all promises are what they seem.

My good friends Milla and Richard and I were wildflower hunting on the CREW lands in Collier County, Florida recently. A prescribed fire and an extended drought have made conditions optimal for an amazing diversity of wildflowers, but there was one in particular that Milla insisted we had to find. She had seen it days before and she promised it wasn’t far from the parking lot.

How far?

“Near Lettuce Lake!”

Ok, that’s not far. I had an appointment and had to be somewhere as promised.

After an hour of stopping to photograph flowers I asked again “how far?”

“Just at the bend in the trail!”

Thirty minutes later the trail bent. There amongst a myriad of wildflowers, as promised, stood tall, a lone Simpson’s Grass-Pink (Calopogontuberosus var. simpsonii), a terrestrial orchid variety only found in seasonally wet, marly soils. The genus Calopogon translates to “beautiful beard” and refers to the unique bristles on the upper lip of the three-petaled flower. The bristles give the appearance of stamen and a false promise of nectar. While attempting to land on the upper lip, heavier insects will cause it to bend, dipping them back onto a mass of pollen grains which can then be transferred to the next flower where cross-pollination is achieved.

© Pete Corradino

This variety is distinguished from the common form, Tuberosus Grass-Pink Calopogon tuberosus) by a narrow and elongated upper lip and is found in grassy savannahs (at the bend in the trail!)

We found several more plants nearby, which all seemed to benefit from the recent fire and open canopy. It was well worth the walk and I was thankful for trusting in Milla’s promise. It did make me wonder how many insects have been tempted by the Grass-Pink’s deception and how many have learned to turn around before wasting their time. I’m glad I didn’t.  

Sweet Combustion - The Orange Blossom

Hanging from the vent on my car’s console is an air “freshener”. It’s empty. The artificially scented liquid that once sloshed around inside and slowly emitted itself into my contained atmosphere merely “masked” the scent of swamp and who knows what else I’ve been dragging from here to there.

Tonight as I make a beeline through the quiet, barren roads of the Everglades I am soothed by the most majestic of natural perfumes. It wafts through every pore of my vehicle and fills my lungs with a sweet delicious aroma.

As I drive north out of the Everglades I make my way through cattle ranches and orange groves where billions of oranges weigh heavily on sturdy, pliable limbs. I am mesmerized by a seemingly endless array of groves. My headlights remain focused ahead but I am convinced I can see brilliant oranges in my peripheral view in an otherwise black and white landscape.

A lone truck passes me heading south bound. A bitter whiff of diesel is smothered by an engulfing gust of the aromatic blooms. The sweet combustion fades into the night with the taillights.

Sable Palms, the State Tree of Florida, wave their fan-shaped fronds, helping to spread the enchanting scent of orange blossoms, the State Flower of Florida, across pastures and prairies.

For a few short weeks in March, the air will be inundated with the most blissful scent – enticing bees to pollinate the trees and making the low-humidity, mosquito free nights the most enjoyable time to sit on the porch, gaze at the stars, listen to the crickets and let your lungs fill with nature’s perfect scent.

Letter Bee - The Mexican Clover

It’s hard to say if laziness, divine intervention, or concern/apathy for the environment led me to turn the mower off and leave my lawn alone. Probably a little bit of everything.

Here in south Florida things are still growing. Flowers still bloom and insects still hop, fly and flit across the lawn. During the summer months you can in fact “watch the grass grow” but with shorter days and fewer rain clouds the need to mow has gone from every four days to every three weeks.

As the dry season kicked in a few weeks back, frost-like blooms took over a corner of the lawn. Days passed and the snowy appearance spread. I mowed, but the prostrate plant avoided the whirling blades and left behind a colorful white and violet ground cover. It was beautiful.

The star-shaped flower is Mexican Clover (Richardia sp.), and despite the name may or may not be a native. It is found in Central and South America as well as the southern United States but may have extended its range down into Florida in the last few decades. Some say it was here before the Spanish explorers and deserves native status. Others think it was introduced.

As I mow on this particular Sunday I find myself humming a certain song as I make pass after pass. Each consecutive lap brings me closer to the field of Mexican Clover that covers nearly half the lawn. I watch hundreds of bees dart from bloom to bloom and slurp nectar from the flowers. Monarchs, White Peacocks, Gulf Fritillaries, Buckeyes, Skippers and other butterflies do the same. It’s like musical chairs for insects.
It’s a spectacular site. My lawn is a refuge. My lawn is a cafeteria. My lawn is beautiful.

Native or exotic – the flowers benefit the bees and butterflies. The humming in my head matches the humming of the bees. It drowns out the mower. I hear my mother say to me, speaking words of wisdom – let it be.
I turn the mower off.

Random Monkey Bonus

Welcome to Ecuador - land of beautiful surprises, amazing vistas and random monkey bonuses. After a late arrival in Guayaquil, Ecuador last night, Ma-Le picked me up at the airport and brought me back for dinner with the family. They were nice enough to wait until 11:30 pm to eat. I was nice enough to not fall asleep in my dinner as well as having the stomach to eat again. That is if you can count eating on the plane. I do. It's exciting and I can never fall asleep until after the chicken and rice served in a soap dish is placed in front of me God forbid I miss a meal. (and Walnut Shortbread Cookies? - sounds gross - quite good. Maybe it's the euphoric amount of oxygen pumped throughout the cabin that provides this assessment). But I digress. NO PHOTOS PLEASE! (The Ecuador paparazzi pestering already.) I hadn't been in the country for 12 hours when we were lucky enough to get a glimpse (albeit at a great distance) of our first monkey. We traveled south to a park called Cerro Blanco (White Hill) and hiked the mountainous terrain in search of mostly birds and lizards but this little scene played out much to my delirium. These photos were taken well over 1/2 a mile away, but you can see the Red Howler monkey, hanging by a prehensile tail and swinging out to a very large flower. The leaves have fallen and most seeds and flowers are prominently displayed for seed dispersers like monkeys, squirrels and birds to find.

A few discarded petals and the lettuce head-sized flower is gone.

On to the next flower....I was lucky enough to see one up close. They are huge! The pollen covered stamens are bent inward, requiring pollinators like bees to crawl inside for the nectar and covering themselves with the pollen which they then bring to the next flower to cross pollinate. I learned this after leaning in to take a giant whiff of the pungent flower and a pollen encrusted bee zipped out.

I had forgotten what it's like to climb mountains. The highest point we reached today was near 1200 feet above sea level and that's about 1190 feet higher than I have gotten used to this year.As we left the park, Ma-Le recognized a friend who is a biologist and vet at the park and although my Spanish is terrible, I distinctly overheard them talking about a mark on his throat and I understood the words "Ocelot" and "Attacked". We headed back to his clinic where he brought out this little guy. Turns out this baby Ocelot had only been nursing on David's neck which left the mark. This 2 month old cat had been taken from the wild to be sold as a pet. It's mother was killed to get it and when the poachers were nabbed for this crime, the police brought the kitten to the refuge where it will now live.

They are carnivores, but at this size, their teeth and jaws can't do too much damage to me. Ma-Le's brother Juan Jose was still cautious, afraid the cute fluffy little thing might rip his face off.

I'm off to the Jungle for the next 9 days!

The Ghost Orchid: The Epiphyte of Your Life

Chances are you will never see a Ghost Orchid in the wild. Rare in nature and often growing in difficult to access places, this seemingly ethereal and ephemeral epiphyte can be found in the Everglades and most specifically in the Fakahatchee Strand State Park where I take my tours. Epiphytes are plants that grow on other plants without being parasitic. They essentially use a host tree for support as the swampy soils and thick canopy make life on the forest floor tough.

The 20,000 acre park has the highest diversity of orchids in North America, but the Ghost Orchid is one of the most rare and in fact we rarely see orchids at all. Sadly, orchid thieves poach the plants from their host tree and sell them on the black market. You may have heard of the 1994 book the Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean based on the true story of a flower poacher in the Fakahatchee. Hollywood made an adaptation loosely based on the book with Nicholas Cage. It was called Adaptation.

Anyway. The orchids are few and far between, but 3 weeks ago, birders at Audubon's Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in Naples, (just north of the Fakahatchee), were searching for Owls when they noticed a 6-blossomed flower growing 60 feet up on the trunk of Bald Cypress! This was a first in that Ghost Orchids had not been found in this sizable sanctuary and no Ghost Orchid had ever been found above 26 feet from the forest floor or on a cypress! That deserves one more!! They've had experts definitively say this is a Ghost Orchid, but who knows, maybe it's a whole new species not known to us.

I've not bothered to be concerned about ever seeing a Ghost Orchid. I just assumed I would never see one, but I headed out to Corkscrew and had the luck to see the most rare flower in North America.

The Sanctuary had spotting scopes to see the flowers which were blooming 100 feet from the boardwalk. My photos will pale in comparison to anyone with a telephoto, but I got a picture nonetheless through the scope.

The flowers bloom from June to August, with 1-10 flowers arising from nothing but roots attached to the cypress. Each flower blooms one after the other and they only last three weeks, so I arrived just in time. Once they go to seed, they drop bell pepper-sized seeds into the wind in the hope that one may land in an appropriate spot and begin to grow. It doesn't happen often.

They're called Ghost Orchid because they look like little dancing ghosts or jumping frogs which is why they have the less then stellar and less used name of Frog Orchid.

The flowers are so prized by orchid thieves, that the sanctuary has had to set up motion-sensing cameras and trip wires around the perimeter of the tree to protect it. There are already rumors of poachers plotting to steal them. Imagine getting caught and going to jail? What are you in for? "Stealing flowers".

I'll stick to photographs. This is one of those once in a lifetime experiences. Couldn't be more elated.