Finding the rare, Platanthera chapmanii orchid in southeast Georgia — 2014-08-07

I will take this opportunity to warn you that this blog post contains lots of food for thought for native orchid geeks. You have now been warned…

I had recently heard from Matt Richards, the Conservation Coordinator at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, about his planned visit to southeast Georgia to monitor several small populations of the rare, Platanthera chapmanii or Chapman’s Fringed orchid. When I found out that he was planning the trip, I wrote to him and asked if I could tag along. Since we have mutual friends who study and photograph native orchids, he readily agreed. His thought was that I could help him possibly discover some new populations of this species down there.

This is a good place to mention that part of the mission of the Atlanta Botanical Garden is to propagate, from seed, threatened or endangered plant species so that they can be reintroduced into the wild. This is not only for those rare Georgia plants, but for plants from states as far away as California.

Chapman’s Fringed orchid is found only in northern Florida, a few sites in adjacent southeast Georgia (namely Brantley, Camden, and Charlton Counties), and a few scattered populations in southeast Texas. Undoubtedly, it was more plentiful before the onslaught of the pine monoculture took over on the coastal plain. Millions of acres of pine plantations have gobbled up the land once inhabited by huge stretches of natural longleaf pine savannahs and wetlands.

In order to prepare the pine plantations for planting, the land is usually stripped of all vegetation, sprayed with strong herbicide, and deeply furrowed to facilitate tree planting. You can easily imagine that no fragile plants such as orchids could survive such an onslaught. The trees are planted so closely together, that nothing can grow between them — no light reaches the ground in these pine plantations. Even if the natural seed bank allows for the orchids to germinate once the trees are harvested, the plants are immediately killed when the harvesting, stripping, spraying, and replanting occurs.

So, the few populations of this rare orchid that are left, especially in Georgia, are found only along roadsides and under power line rights-of-way, where the vegetation is maintained by mowing or occasionally spot spraying of woody vegetation to keep the growth down to a manageable level. This mowing replicates the effect of natural seasonal fires that used to occur on the grassy savannahs where the orchids thrived. Until recently, broadcast spraying was utilized to keep the growth in check under power lines, but a better understanding of the fragility of these species has brought some of the managers of the county roads and power line companies to use spraying very sparingly and then only selective, spot spraying. In some cases, “No spraying or mowing beyond this point” signs have been posted in the most sensitive areas. It seems to be working out in favor of the orchids, since the populations that we found between the signs are apparently healthy and thriving.

Here is an image of a typical, Chapman’s Fringed orchid in full bloom. This was taken along a roadside in Camden County, Georgia:

This orchid has always been one to puzzle botanists, especially the botanists in the southeastern U.S. who have spent any time studying it. Noted botanist, J.K. Small, first described it as a species in 1903, using a specimen he had collected in northeast Florida. He named it to honor Alvan W. Chapman, American botanist and author of “Flora of the Southern United States”, [1860]. Another noted botanist, Oakes Ames, decided that it was intermediate between its putative parents, and so he called it Platanthera Xchapmanii, a natural hybrid between Platanthera ciliaris or Yellow Fringed orchid and Platanthera cristata or Crested Fringed orchid.

Joe and Ann Liggio in their book, “Wild Orchids of Texas” [University of Texas Press, 1999], state:

Agreeing with Small, James Folsom (1984) considered P. chapmanii a separate species because it grows true from seed, has its own unique pollination mechanism, occurs in populations isolated from P. ciliaris and P. cristata, and has a distinctive bent column, unlike P. ciliaris and P. cristata. In addition, most populations of P. chapmanii, P. ciliaris, and P. cristata in the southern United States grow in pure stands with no intermediates or hybrids. Hybrids between P. ciliaris and P. cristata do occur in nature [P. Xchannelii], but they are exceedingly rare. These hybrids lack the distinctive bent column that distinguishes P. chapmanii.

In addition, “Flora of North America”, in its online publication http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=1&taxon_id=242101828, states that P. chapmanii has an almost circular mouth opening at the entrance to the nectar spur, in contrast to the triangular opening in P. cristata.

Thanks to Florida native, Paul Martin Brown, noted botanist and orchid expert who has studied this species extensively, I have a copy of J.P. Folsom’s paper which discusses the differences among the three species in the “Yellow-Fringed Orchid Complex”. The paper was published in 1984 and is entitled, “A Reinterpretation of the Status and Relationships of Taxa of the Yellow-Fringed Orchid Complex”. Here is a Figure from the paper which shows a comparison of the columns of the three species in the Yellow-Fringed Orchid Complex:

Note the significant “hook” in the column of the central figure. That belongs to Platanthera chapmanii. This is a determinative characteristic of this species and is not present in other, similar species with which it can be confused.

Here is a closeup profile shot of one of the plants that we found in Georgia. This image demonstrates the “hook” in the column quite well:

The first site of the dozens of sites that we visited had blooming plants of what turned out to be Platanthera cristata. Matt was unsure of the identification of the plants at this site, but we came to the consensus that they were not Platanthera chapmanii. The second site, however, had about a dozen plants that, without a doubt, proved to be the rare, Platanthera chapmanii. Since this was the first time I had seen them, I was quite excited to be there in their presence, and I immediately went about setting up my camera and tripod to take some photographs. This particular site turned out to be the best of those that we visited on this day. Here are some shots from that location:

It was still fairly early in the morning, and from a certain angle, the sun was highlighting the fringe on the lip of one of the plants. This fringe seems to have a strong influence from the Platanthera ciliaris side of the family. Perhaps there is still some speciation or continuing evolution going on here, or else this might represent a hybrid of some sort. But that is complete speculation on my part. because it is still quite easy to pick out the “hook” in the column on the flower toward the upper left of the inflorescence:

Here is a shot of the roadside habitat of Platanthera chapmanii:

Matt was very patient as I spent a lot of time with this population of orchids. While I was setting up subsequent shots, he walked the road on both sides of the population looking for additional plants.

I finally finished taking photographs of these plants, and I packed my gear and then we headed up the road about a mile away. Here was another site with about 6 or 7 blooming plants. These were not quite as photographically interesting as the plants at the previous site; apparently they had gotten a head start on blooming and were about done. This location had more shade and the vegetation was considerably more dense. Matt said that he would try to have a talk with the county road crew to make sure it is mowed this October after the plants have set seed.

We spent the rest of the day driving the remote county roads in the area, searching for additional orchid sites. As we rounded a curve on one road in particular, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye, and wasn’t sure what it was as we drove past it. I asked Matt if he would back up a bit so that I could get a better look. This particular area was quite wet, and had a number of plants growing in the water. What we had found was a huge population of Habenaria repens or Water-spider orchid. Matt had never seen it before, and although we could not get any closer than 10 feet (3 meters) or so from the closest plant, he was quite excited to see it blooming in Georgia:

To better show you the spider-like flowers, here is a closeup of a plant that I photographed last year in North Carolina:

We continued driving and looking for additional sites for Platanthera chapmanii, but were largely unsuccessful. What we did find, however, were a number of good sites for Platanthera cristata or Crested Fringe orchid:

The color on these Crested Fringed orchids is generally more yellow than Chapman’s Fringed orchid, but that is not a definitive characteristic, since I have seen Crested Fringed orchids are considerably more orange in color.

Here is a shot of Matt studying a nice group of bright yellow Crested Fringed orchids:

Another stop we made was at a site for Platanthera ciliaris or Yellow Fringed orchid sometimes called Orange Fringed orchid.There were only a few plants at this shady, roadside location, and they plants were not as robust as some I’ve seen, but they were pretty, nonetheless:

Note the very different shape of the column of this species in comparison to the column of Chapman’s Fringed orchid.

While searching the roadsides and ditches for orchids, Matt casually pointed out a Clubmoss — one which I have searched for years, but one which I had never been able to find. This is Lycopodiella cernua or Nodding Clubmoss. I remember driving down to Florida one November many years ago looking for this Clubmoss species and never finding it. Thanks to Matt, I can cross another one off of my bucket list:

One final stop in the day was to a site with a single Chapman’s Fringed orchid. This one, in my opinion, was the best of the bunch. The inflorescence was perfectly tapered and the plant was at peak bloom:

Having finished looking for Chapman’s Fringed orchid for the day, Matt took me to a site for another very special orchid — a species that I had never photographed in Georgia. This was Pteroglossaspis ecristata or Spiked Medusa also known as Crestless Plume orchid. I have photographed it in the Francis Marion National Forest in South Carolina, but it is quite difficult to locate good populations of them. This population, however, was thriving and contained a couple of dozen plants. Almost all of the plants had flower spikes which were in a wide range of bloom states. The one that was closest to opening is here:

Most of the rest of the plants were in tight spike, probably a couple of weeks before blooming. Here are two shots of the plants. The first is a distant shot, showing the leaves and the tall, 3-4 foot (1-1.3 meters) stem which will have a half-dozen flowers at the apex. The second shot shows the leaves which, to me, resembled those of the domesticated Gladiolus, whose name comes from Latin, the diminutive of gladius, a sword. Also, notice the background — a clear-cut left over after harvesting a pine plantation. I’m very surprised that anything sprouted in this alien landscape, especially orchids:

I’ll leave you, Dear Reader, with one last image. As we drove into the deepest part of rural southeast Georgia, we came upon a huge lake filled with blooming waterlilies. On a tree beside the lake was this warning sign:

We got out of the car and closely examined the lake. It was easy for us to confirm that the lake was just full of this Dihydrogen oxide… Too much of that stuff is bad, and will likely kill you.

Another fine orchid expedition which netted me one new orchid species and one new Clubmoss species. Not bad for a couple of days of work, I’d say. My thanks go to Matt Richards for including me on his trip to monitor Platanthera chapmanii. We both agree that this species should be added to the list of endangered species. It is certainly endangered in Georgia, as it hangs on by a thread along some rural, county roads. Except for the critical work done by people like Matt in his tireless efforts to network with the Georgia Department of Transportation and the county road crews, this orchid might survive only in the images we take of it in the wild…

–Jim