orchid family | Elizabeth's Wildflower Blog

Earlier this year I was over the moon to find two native orchids in the area, puttyroot (Aplectrum hyemale; fotd 5/20) and cranefly (Tipularia discolor, fotd 7/31). These two plants have a similar, unusual life cycle: the new leaf (one per plant) emerges from the ground in autumn, persists through the winter, then dies back in spring (puttyroot) or early summer (cranefly); some time after that a single flower spike emerges, develops multiple buds, and blooms.

Last week while hiking I saw the new leaves of cranefly orchids; note the characteristic purple underside. (Be assured no plants were harmed, nor soils disturbed, in the taking of these photos!)

Of course I then had to go hunting for puttyroot, too, and found a few of those leaves, and seedpods still on one spike.

cranefly in flower:

puttyroot in flower:

20140520-DSC_0191

This really has been a wonderful year.

Depending on when you look it up, and the current state of research, and the seeming whim of taxonomists, the Asteraceae is the largest plant family on Earth, with 23,000 species (more or less). Only the orchid family is as large, or larger, maybe. Species in the Asteraceae can be found in almost every habitat, on every continent except Antarctica.

Erigeron philadelphicus (common fleabane)

In the Potomac Gorge area, I’ve found more plants in the Asteraceae than any other family, by far: seventy species. That’s out of a total of 351, or just shy of 1 in 5. This includes the asters themselves, the beggar-ticks, bonesets, coneflowers, coreopsis, dandelions, elephant’s foot, everlasting, the various fleabanes, the multitudes of goldenrods, leafcup, hawkweeds, horseweeds, ironweed, fireweed, rattlesnake weed and ragweed and ragwort, pussytoes, snakeroots and sneezeweed, sunflowers and thistles, and wingstem. And some aliens I didn’t bother to name.