Clustered Lady’s-slipper orchids (Cypripedium fasciculatum) in Plumas County, California — 2013-06-13

California provides many great and varying habitats for native wildflowers, one of which is Cypripedium fasciculatum or the Clustered Lady’s-slipper orchid. This is one species of orchid that I have seen only once on a previous trip to northern California, but the flowers were spent, and I really wanted an opportunity to photograph them in peak form.

The event that drew us to California in mid-June, was the annual symposium of the Native Orchid Conference, a group that formed about ten years ago to promote the enjoyment of and to conserve the habitat of native orchids in North America. The symposium was set up to provide two days of speakers and two days of field trips. All four days provided some of the most informative presentations and some of the best native orchids I’ve had the privilege of witnessing.

By the way, kudos go to Raymond Prothero, a local Sacramento native and the field trip coordinator for this year’s symposium. He knows his native orchids and provided us with many locations for orchids in perfect bloom.

Here is a close-up shot of the flowers of Cypripedium fasciculatum:

The drive up into the mountains to see these little beauties turned out to be quite exciting. Since there were too many attendees to see these plants as a single field trip group, we divided into four separate caravans of about sixteen people in each group. Our part of the group caravan met at the Mt. Hough Ranger Station in the Plumas National Forest, where we planned the drive up into the mountains. Our trip leader was David Popp, a local naturalist with a great deal of botanical experience in the region.

The roads leading up to the orchids are quite tortuous since they are narrow gravel roads managed by the Forest Service. There are no guardrails, and the drop off the edge can be very sobering. In addition, it was almost impossible to see more than ten feet in front of the car due to the dust clouds stirred up by the vehicles in the front of the caravan. Turns out that David had been to the site during the prior week, but was a bit unsure exactly how to get us back there. He had a crude map, but there were some features on it which were vague. There were several forks in the road to navigate, and we ended up missing the first one, so we spent the better part of the morning back-tracking until we found the correct direction to take.

Once at the site, we loaded our gear and proceeded into the woods and up the steep mountain slope. The ground was very dry, since the area has had less than 20% of its expected rainfall. The forest floor was littered with dry leaves and conifer needles which makes prime fuel for a forest fire. We had seen several signs that warned of an extreme fire danger.

When we finally arrived at the spot where the orchids were located, we saw a few plants whose flowers had “bolted”. This is a term used to describe the raised flower stem loaded with dried flowers and ripening seed capsules. When the flowers are in prime bloom, they are drooping and almost touching the ground. I finally breathed a sigh of relief when someone yelled, “I found them, over here…”. It was pretty much a mad dash to see what they had found:

They were beginning to “bolt”, but the flowers were still in decent photographable shape.

Soon, we began to find many more flowering plants — one group of about twenty-five plants, and most of them were in excellent blooming condition. However, it was almost impossible to see the tiny slipper pouches unless the camera was positioned on the ground! Setting up a tripod and camera on the steep side of a mountain is not for the faint of heart. Several times, I caught myself sliding down the slope toward a dry creek bed filled with sharp boulders. Fortunately, I was able to proceed without sustaining anything more than a few scrapes.

The flowers consist of a tiny pouch (less than 1/2 inch or 1 cm across) which is almost entirely enclosed by drooping sepals and petals:

The flowers exhibited several color forms ranging from a light greenish-tan with a purplish blush to flowers with dark mahogany-striped petals and sepals:

We even found one plant whose flowers were very deep reddish-brown:

As you would expect, there flowers with all combinations of the various color forms:

We spent quite a while at this site — everyone trying for that special shot — some with point-and-shoot cameras; some with an elaborate setup. Several non-photographers were content just to stand there and admire the view… Finally, I was able to strike another North American native orchid species off of my “life list”.

Even though we had a few problems getting to this location, we had a great time sharing the experience and close companionship with a group of orchid enthusiasts and friends from all over the world. The NOC is a great organization that is meeting its goal of providing a way to promote conservation of native orchids and also to provide its members with some long-lasting memories…

— Jim