#100 Learning to see the flowers through the trees
August 28, 2008
Photo of cranefly orchid, Tipularia discolor, courtesy of Rose Brown.
This show originally aired in August 28, 2008 on “The Rivanna Rambler,” a weekly public affairs show airing every Thursday at 11:55 a.m. on WTJU 91.1 FM or wtju.net
When Teddy Roosevelt, known to be both big game hunter and amateur botanical collector, was asked to give an account of his interest and experience as an amateur naturalist, he replied, “The former has always been very real; and the latter, unfortunately, very limited.” I imagine most of us amateur naturalists feel pretty much the same way: it’s nigh impossible to imagine knowing very many organisms to the species level with the latest count around 2 million named and millions more suspected.
So we amateurs fall somewhere on the spectrum between curious and crazed, seeking to manage the acquisition of knowledge in ways that personally give pleasure. Birders pursue life lists in the attempt to actually see every one of the 9000 plus species. Botanists pour over plates in herbariums to see if a variety they’ve found is a sub-species, alternate, or possibly a cultivar.
To me, a newly minted Virginia Master Naturalist, it seemed right to start to find my own rhythm of discovery and naming after finishing the class in the spring. So for the last several months, I’ve been scribbling notes in field books whenever I go out; capturing images with my digital camera, and trying to find the time to just collect the information in a way that will help me build a knowledge base for the plants and animals of this watershed on a seasonal basis.
Early in July, a notation in my appointment book provided just the impetus for a new and perhaps higher stage of discovery. In one corner of the book, I had written: “Start looking for the cranefly orchid.” This reminder had been written after a field trip in the late winter woods with Tom Dierauf at Ivy Creek where he pulled back the brown leaf litter to show us the shiny dark green leaves with raised purple spots, the matching mauve underside, a harbinger of the inflorescence to come.
“This will all die back, and in the summer, about the time that the crane flies hatch, the plant will send up a stalk, a beautiful stalk with pale delicate flowers.” Tipularia discolor, it is called, this member of the orchid family.
It was an invitation to a quest – and so, one weekday morning at 7 a.m., I met my fellow-graduates, Amy and Rose, at the Ivy Creek Natural Area, and headed down the path to the place we’d seen the plant’s winter leaves. I walked slowly along the slope above the reservoir, and though I had seen pictures of the plant online and knew by the guides that it would be about 30 centimeters tall, I was not prepared for what emerged out of the brown duff of the hillside.
Camouflaged, smaller than I imagined, were slender stalks adorned with the flowers, each no longer than an inch and made up of the requisite parts, ovary, sepals, petals, all delicately curled like a young shy girl, with a light green column, one each inclined and angled just so for the Noctuidae – or owlet moths – upon whose eyes this waxy compound of pollen attaches.
As we each bent in turn to see these flowers better in the dim morning light, bringing the land lens to eye and focusing on the parts, I was struck by the form of the flower, looking much like the cranefly itself. Those large winged insects that hover by outdoor lights in the summer, looking too much like a mosquito for comfort – but in reality, insects whose adult stage is defined only by the search for a mate – no biting, stinging, or eating of any kind for this family of flies.
The search successful, we walked a bit further, seeing now that the orchids are everywhere along the path – twenty at least, maybe more. Together we felt the satisfaction of finding what we were looking for – at the time it was in bloom – and teaching our eyes to recognize the form of flower in the woods for our next season of stalking. So like Teddy Roosevelt, my interest remained high, and my passion for knowing more, was kindled anew.