The Unexpected Orchid Exhibit Continues

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may be aware that in the five years that Lindsay and I have lived on our property in North Liberty, Indiana, we located two species of orchids on the land formerly used as hog pasture and currently in an old-field state.  First was Ragged Fringed Orchid (Platanthera lacera) on 4 July 2009, and then on 4 September of that same year I came across Purple Twayblade (Liparis liliifolia) while conducting transect/quadrat sampling on our property.  Two orchid species on our property!  Two species, that is, until this spring. 

Sometime this March I noticed the leaves of an orchid along the trails through our property.  I immediately recognized the orchid as a twayblade (Liparis), but the leaves seemed more narrow than the Purple Twayblade I'd found on our property two-and-a-half years prior.  I decided to keep an eye on this orchid with hopes that it would develop flowers.  Then, one day in late May, Lindsay was walking Bootypants and noticed that the orchid had produced flowers.  She called me at work to let me know, and with much anticipation, I asked if the flowers were purple.  To my amazement and delight, the answer was "no, they're green."  I was aware of the green-flowered form of Purple Twayblade (called Liparis liliifolia forma viridiflora), but I also knew that Green Twayblade (Liparis loeselii), which has narrower leaves than Purple Twayblade, has green flowers.  I couldn't wait to get home and walk (it turned out to be more of a jog) to the far western end of our property to have a look for myself.

Sure enough, that excited confusion that I experienced on 4 July and 5 September 2009 was repeated as I gazed upon a single Green Twayblade plant in flower!  During the sampling I conducted on our property on 5 September 2009, I did see a single narrow-leaved twayblade plant without flowers along the northern boundary of our property that I thought looked like Green Twayblade, but I didn't expect to see this species that normally grows in calcareous wetlands (such as fens, pannes, and sedge meadows) in our weedy old-field, so I assumed that it was probably just a narrow-leaved Purple Twayblade.  I went back to that location the following year and couldn't relocate the plant.  Now I am fairly convinced that the plant I saw on 5 September 2009 after already finding Purple Twayblade on our property was in fact the the same species that I saw in flower on 25 May 2012, Green Twayblade.

Although Green Twayblade (also known as Loesel's Twayblade) usually is found in calcareous wetlands, it is not unprecedented to find it in a shrubby old field such as ours. Homoya (1993) mentions accounts of this species in dry, brushy old-fields (such as ours) and young regrowth forests, but these accounts seem to be rare.  Maybe that's because this species is small and inconspicous and old-fields and young regrowth forests aren't on the top of the list for people to botanize.  Or maybe, as Homoya (1993) suggests, this species is expanding its range south and into different habitats.  Or maybe, just maybe, there is a third species of twayblade in the Great Lakes region that grows in drier conditions and that has yet to be described.

For more information on Green Twayblade, see my recent post at Get Your Botany On!.

Anyone care to venture a guess as to what the next species of orchid to surface on our property will be?  I would say that I would be surprised to find another species, but after what we've seen so far, I wouldn't be telling the entire truth.


Homoya, M.A. 1993. Orchids of Indiana. Indiana Academy of Science. pp. 136-139.

Surprise After Surprise

Last September, I sampled transects through our 11-acre property so that I can track changes to the plant community over time. During my sampling, I came across several populations of Purple Twayblade (Liparis liliifolia), the second orchid species documented on our property. Because this is a spring/summer-flowering orchid, I made a note on my calendar to get back out in mid-May to the spot where I initially discovered it. As you will see below, I was not disappointed.


Purple Twayblade grows in a range of ecological conditions, ranging from dry woods to pine plantations to shrubby fields to savannas to mesic forests. It is even often found in fields that were recently cropped; however, it doesn't hang around long in these recovering fields. There seems to be a period of time when Purple Twayblade thrives, between the initial colonization of a field after cultivation and the heavy shade and thick leaf litter created by forest trees thirty to forty years later. In the heart of its range, Purple Twayblade currently seems to be increasing in abundance, possibly as a result of ever increasing anthropogenic disturbances.


I've read several accounts that note that the flowers of Purple Twayblade are not showy, or that they are inconspicuous. I wholeheartedly disagree. Until this year, I'd never paid close attention to its flowers... but have a look at the two close-ups below. Those are some of the craziest looking flowers around.


You can see the three sepals, three petals, and reproductive column in the photos above and below. The sepals are the ~1/2 inch long whitish structures. The petals are the pale purple structures. The two lateral petals are filiform; the third petal is the broad, circular or heart-shaped lip. The reproductive column is just above the lip. In some of the photos above and in the photo below, you can also see the shiny, waxy leaves for which the genus is named; Liparis is from the Greek word for "fatty" or "greasy."


When we bought our property in spring of 2007, I was pretty convinced that the land was a mundane pasture of Hungarian Brome (Bromis inermis), Tall Goldenrod (Solidago altissima), Kentucky Bluegrass (Poa pratensis), and Tall Fescue (Schedonorus phoenix). Purple Twayblade was one of the surprises on our property (but maybe it shouldn't have been, given the history of our property and the ecology of the species). Ragged Fringed Orchid (Platanthera lacera) was another. Swamp Rose (Rosa palustris), Golden Ragwort (Packera aurea), and Humped Bladderwort (Utricularia gibba) were also nice surprises. Recently, I've also found Inflated Narrow-leaf Sedge (Carex grisea), Redbud (Cercis canadensis), Sweet Crab Apple (Malus coronaria), and American Plum (Prunus americana) on our land. And today, while heading out to photograph Purple Twayblade, I found a couple of clumps of the dainty Purple-sheathed Graceful Sedge (Carex gracillima), shown below.


Our property plant list is up to 182 species, and it seems like I see a new plant every week. Our bird list stands at 107 species. There's no telling what surprise we will encounter next.

Lindsay and Scott's Orchid Farm

As I stated in my July 4, 2009 post on this blog, when Lindsay and I bought our property 2 1/2 years ago, we didn't buy it for its floristic diversity. Regardless, from the time we purchased our approximately 11 acres, I have had the desire to sample transects across our land so that I can track changes to the plant community over time. We have plans to plant trees to restore the mesic forest that was likely present here at the time of European settlement, and it will be interesting to see how the understory changes as the trees mature. This weekend is my first open weekend in quite some time, so today I decided to begin my pre-planting sampling.

This is what most of our property currently looks like. Lots of Tall Goldenrod (Solidago altissima). Underneath the goldenrod, Kentucky Bluegrass (Poa pratensis) is abundant and Hungarian Brome (Bromus inermis) is common, but there are several other species that are consistently showing up in my sampling quadrats: Virginia Creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia), Poison Ivy (Toxicodendron radicans), White Avens (Geum canadense), Rough Avens (Geum laciniatum var. trichocarpum), Wild Strawberry (Fragaria virginiana), Panicled Aster (Aster simplex), and others.

At the far west end of our property, trees such as American Elm (Ulmus americana) and Wild Black Cherry (Prunus serotina) have begun to recolonize the land. This portion of our property currently looks like this...

Quadrat sampling is unparalleled in terms of methodology for compiling a complete plant inventory for a site. Sure, a reasonably complete site inventory can be conducted by reconnaissance surveys, but smaller species, seedlings, and those underneath the dense growth of herbaceous vegetation can easily be missed. When sampling quadrats, however, one is on their hands and knees, wading through taller vegetation to ensure that no species within a given quadrat goes unrecorded.

That's how I discovered the plant pictured above this afternoon. This is Purple Twayblade (Liparis liliifolia), the second orchid species that we've found on our property (the first was Platanthera lacera). So far, I've located two populations of Purple Twayblade on our property; one of simply a single plant, which I found in a quadrat under lush growth of herbaceous species, and one of 20+ plants in an area being colonized by trees. The two photos below show flowering Purple Twayblade in Griffith, Indiana on June 7, 2005.

Before we bought our property, if someone had told me that there was an orchid on the land, this is the one I would have guessed first, as it is able to withstand and often thrive in disturbed soils. Purple Twayblade grows in dry to moist soils in both forests and old-fields. According to Mike Homoya's Orchids of Indiana, this species is most commonly found in well-drained, mildly acidic soils supporting young regrowth forest on land previously pastured or cropped. I have observed Purple Twayblade on several occasions in these exact conditions.

While finding Purple Twayblade on our property isn't necessarily significant, it is still exciting to know that we have two species of orchids on our land, which was used as a hog farm not that long ago, and which I expected to be nothing but Tall Goldenrod and pasture grasses. It also adds another piece to the puzzle as we try to understand the intricacies of the land and what it was prior to settlement.