Kate, normally a regular species digbyana surely wouldn't last that long, I posted this plant in bloom at the end of March. This one is (old name) Blc Hawaiian Green Valley x Rhyncholaelia digbyana. And it really looks like a big fat digbyana!
I like it a lot too.
- looking for wild Orchids, going off trails is many times the best way to discover something new.
We made some mistake in our early years of looking for Orchids at our place in NE Pennsy. - by tracking a specific single Platanthera macrophylla, we probably made a trail too easy for Deer to follow. We tracked the leaves for several years, it bloomed and then the whole top of the spike was chomped off, leaving just enough blooms for identification. The plant never came back! Later on we would place wire cages around single precious plants.
The first Orchid we found in Pennsy was a small Spiranthes cernua:
One day in Fall we spent a whole day with a chain saw keeping the woods from encroaching the Blueberries/ the meadow. At the end of that day as we were done pulling the chopped small trees into a pile into the woods, Klaus just called to me to bring the chain saw down to the cabin. As I bent down to pick it up from the ground, I saw a small white blooming spike. I screamed loud for Klaus to take a look! We had never see this wildflower before and it was just a miracle we hadn't stepped on it during all the work we did. We both layed on the ground, I took pictures, used a magnifying lens, we checked our books, and sure enough, we had Spiranthes cernua.
Then in days and months and years to follow, we found them on many other spots too, and we discovered other native Orchids as well.
