Flowers for Father's Day

The Six Mile Cypress Slough Preserve is a nine-mile long, third of a mile wide, linear strand of forest in Fort Myers, Florida. I assume the name “Nine Mile Cypress Slough Preserve” had already been taken. The 2500-acre preserve is home to a remarkable diversity of plants and wildlife, many of which can be seen on a two and half mile boardwalk.

Florida Butterfly Orchid © Pete Corradino

My dad and I came out here years ago and while others were quick to speed around the circuit we stopped and sat on a bench. We watched Green Anoles flaring their dewlaps in a reptilian show of dominance. We watched a Yellow Rat Snake glide between cypress knees. We spotted a female NorthernCardinal flitting from branch to branch and we listened to a Carolina Wren belt out an unimaginably loud call for such a small bird. A couple of people walked by at a brisk pace and dejectedly remarked that there was nothing to see here. I’ve heard this complaint repeated many times through the years no matter where I go. I’m hoping they’re referring to the wildlife and not me.

© Pete Corradino

I spent Father’s Day at the Six Mile Cypress this year. The rains have yet to fill the swamp and I found myself saying how little there was to see. Thinking about my visit with my father, my wife and baby stopped and took it all in.

Clinging to a Pop Ash, about ten feet off the dry swamp floor was a beautiful Florida Butterfly Orchid (Encyclia tampensis). This bee pollinated epiphyte (a plant that grows on another plant) gets its name from the way the flowers dance in the wind like butterflies. The relatively common orchid blooms from May through August from central Florida south through the Everglades. The plant is not parasitic but does get support from the tree and nutrients and water from its heightened position.

Florida Butterfly Orchid © Pete Corradino

We spotted five different flowers in the preserve today which is five more than I’ve seen before here. It helped to have beautiful yellow flowers cast about in the breeze but I might have missed them had I not stopped to look up and around.

I couldn’t be with my father today but here are some flowers for Father’s Day.  

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.  

Survivalman 2: Return to the Fakahatchee

Sequels never live up to the original but when it comes to my adventures with Mike in the Fakahatchee Strand of the Everglades, how can things not improve over the tale of survival from August of 2007?

Mike emailed me a few weeks ago and said he was heading down from Vermont and wanted to face his fears in the Fakahatchee. We had planned on meeting last year to search for 2 rare ferns in the 80,000 acre wilderness and instead he spent a rain-soaked night in the Everglades, listening to bellowing alligators and fearing the consequences of drinking water filtered through his own shirt. It was a life or death experience and now he was hoping to put that nightmare in the past and finally get to searching for the rare ferns we had hoped to find a year ago.

South Florida Jane's Scenic Drive in the Fakahatchee Strand State Park Our 3/10 miles bushwhack GPS track to "the pond" Jane's Scenic Drive

For most people - an invitation to walk knee deep in tannin-stained waters in a remote Everglades swamp with mosquitoes, high heat and humidity and a clausterphobically dense forest would be met with a resounding "no", but with a name like JunglePete, I have to say yes. Our plan was to bushwhack 3/10 of a mile to a pond where 2 rare ferns have been reported. This is no easy task. MaLe and I attempted a similar hike last year during the drought and the tangles of vines, briers, poison ivy and all around thick vegetation make any forward movement a momentous struggle. It took us 2 hours to go 1/2 miles.

Mike was waiting for me when I arrived at teh Ranger station and we drove out the 9 miles to the "trailhead". With cameras, gps, water and Mike's compass we set off for the pond. When Mike asked if I was ready I hesitantly agreed and stepped into 2 feet of surprisingly cool water. It was 9 am. Our judgement will no doubt be called into question when I point out the Water Moccasin pictured below. The snake held its ground before retreating a slow slither back into a rotted out cypress stump. We were well aware of all the dangers and were vigilant in watching every step. This place is truly the land of the lost. Pop Ash, Maples and Pond Apples are well adorned with bromiliads, orchids and vines. Every root, branch and tree trunk is a place for a fern, mushroom or flower to grow. There is little open space as everything competes to survive.

After an hour of slogging through ankle deep water, I paused to look around, giving our second Water Moccasin a chance to slither between the two of us. I shouted an expletive, jumped backwards and watched it swim into a small cypress hammock. My heart racing, I quickly and carefully waded up to Mike. After 90 minutes we began to hear the bellowing of alligators coming from the pond - loud territorial growls intended to keep us at bay. Had any of these alligators ever seen a human before? It's possible they hadn't but like any well behaved alligator, they took to the water and ceased their grumbling. The age old question is answered below. Bears do poop in the woods. That was one big turd. After 4 hours of listening to buzzing, swatting at bugs and sweating through my long-sleeved shirt, I was exhausted. The search for our ferns had been unsuccessful and torn and tattered we began to head back through the tangle of trees. My safari tour hat has suffered greatly - here appearing bent, soaked and dirty. As we dragged ourselves back through the swamp, Mike shouted out. This was something I had gotten used to, but was never sure if it was for a wild animal, a poisonous plant or an exclamation of joy. It turns out that after giving up, we had accidentally stumbled on the rare "Bird's Nest Fern". It looks similar to the common Strap Fern with a few subtle differences. To the common person it no doubt looks like any other green leaf and I wouldn't expect the image of it to change readers world. But after 4+ hours of searching it was truly exciting for us. Thoroughly pleased, we continued on and had just gotten under way when Mike said "Wait - here it is". And there it was - our 2nd rare fern species. An unassuming little thing that even I thought looked like every other green leafy thing. There is a great wilderness here and there can be little doubt that there are other rare species if not completely new species of ferns, flowers, insects and other living things. I wondered how such things could be found. We might have passed over something unknown. Mike said to me later - "You see what you know". Everything else is a mystery to be solved and something new to learn.

Mike suggested he couldn't have gotten anyone else willing to share that experience. You have to be a little nuts. But I couldn't be happier to have had the 2nd chance to get back out there. I'd say the sequel was much better.

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.