Day 3 — Orchids on the “Rock” — Newfoundland — 2013-07-05

This is a two-part entry, detailing our visits first to Parc Boutte du Cap and then to a relatively unknown bog that I’ll call “Kippens Bog”, since it just east of the village of Kippens.

We arrived at the Felix Bed & Breakfast in early evening. After Walter and Chris and I unpacked our belongings, Chris suggested that we head on down to Parc Boutte du Cap, since there was still some light left in the day. We would be able to check out the area and get a better idea of what would be waiting for us in the morning. Parc Boutte du Cap is situated at the southwestern tip of Port au Port Peninsula on Cape St. George, Newfoundland.

The light was really weird that evening. The overcast sky was tinted a reddish-orange. We would soon discover that this color was caused by a heavy layer of smoke in the upper atmosphere from fires across the water in Quebec. Later in our trip, we would actually be able to smell the smoke — not a very comforting situation…

Anyway, Chris and I headed off to the cliffs. When we got there, the wind was howling, and we could hardly remain upright. The landscape was devoid of any vegetation that was more than a foot high. many of the spruce trees were growing prone to the ground, barely sheltering the wildflowers. We spent about a half-hour there getting out bearings for tomorrow’s photo adventure. Even though I was told to expect large numbers of orchids, I was stunned at the number of Cypripedium parviflorum var. pubescens or Yellow Lady’s Slipper orchids that were growing in crevaces in the flat limestone. Many were growing right up to the edge of the 200-foot (~60 meter) cliffs.

When Walter and I arrived early the next morning, Chris has already been there for a couple of hours (as I indicated previousy, he likes to get an early start). The wind had slackened somewhat from what we experienced the evening before, but it still made photographing the orchids quite a challenge. The sun was going in and out from behind the clouds, which added another dimension to the difficulty. Finally, I decided that I would just go with the flow, and try to account for harsh shadows in post-processing my images. I found it almost impossible to hold a diffuser and a light reflector in addition to focusing the camera and pressing the shutter. Nature was winning… 😉

We soon settled down to finding the best of the thousands of tiny yellow orchids to photograph. Since this is a species that blooms in late June at this particular site, many if not most of the flowers had suffered from age, exposure to the wind, and (we would discover later) to slugs and snails. Many of the flowers had brown spots and holes in the lip/pouch:

However, there were many acres of orchids at this site, providing thousands of flowers to choose from:

Wide angle shots such as this have always been a problem for me to capture in the same way as seen by the naked eye, but I hope you get the message…

Soon, we were finding some pretty nice specimens:

Many of the Large Yellow Lady’s-Slipper orchids were of the form, “planipetalum” as shown above. This term has been applied as a variety and also as a forma, and there is still lively discussion in the native orchid community as to whether either of these applications is valid. In any case, it represents a collection of flowers whose petals are straight and flat rather than spiraled, as with most of the Large Yellow Lady’s-slipper orchids in other locations on the continent.

Here is one we found with typically spiraled petals:

We found many groups and clusters of orchid flowers, but finding a group having all of the flowers being undamaged was quite a chore. But we finally found a few, small, photogenic groups:

One thing to understand about these flowers is that they are no more than 4 or 5 inches (10-12 cm) tall! To a person, like me, who is used to seeing this species in the Carolinas with flowers held on two-foot (60 cm) stems, this came as quit a shock. Nevertheless, they were quite beautiful — like yellow torches in the sunlight…

We even found a few plants growing next to the previous year’s seed capsules:

When I saw the next one from the front, I thought it was a double-flowered form, but you can easily see that it is merely two plants growing closely together:

There were many to choose from, and we covered a lot of ground before finding the best of them:

I heard Chris say that he found a true double-flowered one, and I wasted no time running over to see it:

As we wandered into the more woodsy portions of the site, we found one group of Yellow Lady’s-Slipper orchids that was sheltered by an over-hanging spruce. What was odd about the flowers in this group, was the very dark petals and sepals. It was the only group like it that we saw the entire day. There is a variety of this species that is called, “variety makasin”, with very dark petals and a strong fragrance, but I am not sure that this is what we were seeing. I’ll let you, the reader, decide for yourself:

Close to these dark-petaled orchids was a group of Corallohriza maculata var. maculata or Spotted Coralroot orchid. These were on their way past prime blooming, and we would be seeing much better specimens later on the trip:

Another orchid that we were seeing a lot of in the area was Platanthera aquilonis or Northern Green orchid:

You can appreciate how tiny some of these plants were: that is a Canadian quarter dollar, about 1 inch (2.5 cm) tall! Here are a few more images of this rather nondescript orchid:

We ended up spending several hours at this location, knocked around by the relentless wind. I wanted to get a few shots of the orchids that were growing next to the edge of the cliffs, so I gingerly made my way to the edge to get a few shots. The first one shows Walter about as close to the edge of the cliff as a person with acrophobia is willing to get:

The last shot (below) I took at this location represents orchids fighting the harsh environment and exposure at Cape St. George. Their roots are nestled in the ground surrounded by stunted spruce branches. The wind is constantly buffeting those tiny flowers, but they managed to put on quite a show for us. I have heard that there were 30,000+ orchids blooming at this site, but who am I to say? I can barely count to 21 using fingers, toes, and other body parts:

After agreeing that we had gotten as much from this location as was humanly possible, we packed our gear and headed east to find a site whose directions had been given to me by my friends, Diane Allen and Paul Hines. They had visited the site earlier in the week with a group of wildflower enthusiasts. Diane had reported to me that she had found a double-flowerd Arethusa bulbosa or Dragon’s Mouth orchid. Naturally, with my newly-found interest in this orchid species, I had to see if I could locate her sighting, which she had marked with a stick.

As it turns out, this is a rather large bog covering many acres. Both Chris (in a separate vehicle) and Walter and I had noticed this bog when we drove by it on our way to Cape St. George. I was excited that this was the bog that Diane and Paul had pointed out in their directions. Since there was not a suitable section of shoulder on which to park, we drove down the road another tenth of a mile or so, and pulled into a gravel pulloff. Turns out, we had to move the vehicles because a fellow on an large piece of earth-moving equipment needed to use the same area to move some dirt. I’m always lothe to challenge a large piece of earth-moving equipment, especially since I was driving a rental, so we found a better place to park close by.

We gathered our gear and headed down the road to find a way to enter the bog. Most highways that transect boggy areas are raised with ditches on both sides. We managed to find a way to jump the ditch, and so we proceeded into the bog. In no time, we were seeing thousands of Arethusa bulbosa scattered all over the bog. Many specimens of the common pitcher plant, Sarracenia purpurea were also in evidence. I made an effort to follow Diane’s directions, and soon found the stick with a strip of colored flagging tape at the top. It was in the eastern edge of the bog. Sure enough, there was a double-flowered Arethusa bulbosa there, but the bottom flower had already started turning brown around the edges, and it was not very photogenic.

Figuring that if there was one double-flowered plant, there must be more, we headed out into the center of the bog to see what we could find. No more than a few steps later, I saw what looked like a tightly-packed group of Arethusa bulbosa flowers, and I bent down to take a closer look. What I found, was a triple-flowered specimen! Wow! Who knew…?

The flowers are not positioned very well for a great shot, but for documentation purposes, it is just perfect.

We all took our time photographing this plant, and soon we were back on the search for more multiple-flowered specimens. There must be something “in the water” at this site, because I quit counting after about 10 instances of double-flowered Arethusa bulbosa. Here are a couple more images to show this odd occurrence:

With all of the excitment, I had almost overlooked another species to add to my trip list: Calopogon tuberosus or Common Grass-Pink orchid. There were many of them scattered here and there, and the color and size made them difficult to tell apart from the ubiquitous Arethusa bulbosa. Down our way in the Carolinas, this species can attain a height of 2 feet (60 cm) and have as many as 15 or more flowers on a single stem. However, keeping with the “shortness” rule in Newfoundland, these plants were only a few inches tall and had no more than three or four flowers:

But, the rich, vibrant magenta color of the petals made this one of the prettiest of the orchids in the bog. I’m so glad I didn’t overlook these Calopogon tuberosus specimens while searching for additional multi-flowered Arethusa bulbosa.

Well, it was late afternoon, and we had quite a drive ahead of us to get to Rocky Harbour before nightfall. Chris had indicated that he would keep in touch (he was staying in different accommodations), since we had a rendezvous with another friend who would be giving us a tour of the Lomond River Trail…

— Jim