Day 1 — Orchids on the “Rock” — Newfoundland — 2013-07-03

This blog entry represents the first journal installment of the orchid photography trip that I had been planning in the back of my mind for many years. For varying reasons, the trip had to be put on the back burner, but this is the year when it would actually happen.

There are a number of people that I have to thank for making the trip as successful as it was. In alphabetical order, they are Diane Allen, Stan Bentley, Paul Martin Brown, Michael Burzynski, Brian Cassie, Shirley Curtis, Neil Jacobs, Paul Hines, Henry Mann, Phyllis Mann, Anne Marceau, Jen Modlieszewski, Tom Nelson, Andrus Voitk, and Maria Voitk. As always, when presenting a list such as this, there is the chance that someone will be left out, so I apologize ahead of time if I have omitted anyone. I cannot imagine much success for an exploratory orchid trip without compiling maps, directions, and suggestions from those who have made similar trips to Newfoundland to find native orchids. The above contributors either provided maps and directions or actually met us at local sites to show us the best the site has to offer. I am deeply grateful to you all for your generosity…

Newfoundland, Canada is a large island on the east coast of Canada. It has been known over the years as a separate province, but it is now designated as the province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Walter Ezell and I left for Newfoundland on the morning of July 2, 2013. We flew from Greenville/Spartanburg, South Carolina to Newark, New Jersey and then to Halifax, Nova Scotia. From there, we drove the 4.5-hour trip to North Sydney, Nova Scotia where we boarded the 11:45 pm ferry to Newfoundland. We arrived in Channel Port aux Basques (PAB), Newfoundland early on the morning of July 3 after a 5-hour crossing. Channel Port aux Basques is a small port city on the southwest coast of Newfoundland. We were able to secure our room in the Hotel Port aux Basques and wasted little time heading out to our first stop: Edna’s Road, just west of PAB on the Trans Canada Highway (TCH). Edna’s Road is a short gravel road ending in a small housing development near the Atlantic Ocean.

Tom Nelson had passed this location information to me through a journal witten by Brian Cassie in 2004. What makes this site so special is its easy access through the old railroad bed that has been converted to a greenway and bike trail. This trail runs directly through several wonderful bogs that contain a number of native orchid species. We had hoped to meet our flickr friend, Chris Davidson, in PAB, but he did not arrive until late on July 3. So we headed west to Edna’s Road to check it out. As it turned out, our directions were on the spot, and we had no trouble finding the site. When we arrived, we parked in a small gravel parking area, unloaded our photographic equipment, and walked the short distance to the bog:

It is a typical, flat bog, tilting gently up to the TCH at the north end. We jumped a shallow ditch and landed on the spongy surface. Eons ago, many of the bogs in Newfoundland started out as pools of water on shallow limestone depressions. Over many years, these pools were filled in by certain Sphagnum species. This forms the supporting base for many of Newfoundland’s orchid species. Edna’s Road Bog is no exception.

Almost immediately, we began to see spots of magenta colored flowers scattered in the short grass:

Of course, this was the first of thirty-five orchid species we would see during our stay in Newfoundland. I had photographed Arethusa bulbosa or Dragon’s Mouth orchid only once before, and that was in Maine. A few of those images ended up in my book, Wild Orchids of South Carolina: A Popular Natural History. Historically, Arethusa bulbosa had been found locally in a few montane bogs (also called upland bogs, or Southern Appalachian bogs) in the mountains of South Carolina, but it hasn’t been seen there since the 1970s.

We were seeing many of the typical, magenta colored flowers growing in large numbers:

There were many clusters of a dozen or more flowers in varying shades:

But what I was really looking for was some interesting color forms. What I found was quite amazing:

But my favorites had to be the very light ones with dark markings on the lip:

I could see many more color forms that I wanted to photograph, but it was getting late. I was still looking for the alba (white) form, so we made plans to revisit Edna’s Road Bog the next day, when hopefully, our flickr friend Chris Davidson could join us.

— Jim