Favoritos de ab_orchid

Ongoing checking of this endangered species population. In flower on Aug 12, and not again until Aug 25. Looks to have a few more buds that may open in the next week or two. On the 25th, there were about 125 plants noted, probably a few more that were missed. Lots of doubles and even a triple. And this time there were more with a nice touch of magenta.

Numerous inflorescences present (low to mid hundreds in 20m square area. An estimated +-5 percent lack some level of pigmentation, with white labellum lacking spots. (Due to known anthocyanin mutation?)

Completely SPURLESS form of what otherwise appears to be Platanthera aquilonis*. We have 120+ locations mapped in the BC Peace River region. The project to map the range of these spurless plants is ongoing as well as collection of whole plants, flowers in spirit and silica.

This old cutline location is the mother lode! There were so many Platanthera orchids along here that we gave up on looking at them all, but many of them are spurless like these.

*there are other differences (like the abruptly-widened lip petal base) but the lack of a spur is the easiest to see for field ID purposes!

Specimens have been submitted to UBC.

Two leftmost slippers are pale yellow (recently opened judging by the position of the synsepals). The two buds in the process of opening also have pale yellow slippers. I believe the slippers of this hybrid frequently start off as some shade of yellow, before fading to a lighter shade of yellow or near-white.

4 plants of the Alba form growing amongst the the regular Eastern Fairy-Slipper.

Lewis Clark in his book  Wild Flowers of the Pacific Northwest says "When shape and proportion, colour and perfume are all considered, this must rank as one of the most enchantingly lovely of all our native plants."