Surprise!

On Sunday (01 July 2018) I visited a park near Williamston, MI to walk through an older prairie restoration.  I first visited this park back in 2010 and I wanted to see how things have progressed in the intervening years.  On my original visit I was impressed by the variety of plant species that I encountered and the impressive number of pollinators visiting them.

My timing could be better.  The majority of the prairie species have yet to flower.  The most impressive blooms that I encountered were those of Black-eyed Susan (Rudbecki hirta).

Black-eyed Susans are great!  They are common, pretty, and easy to identify. I enjoy looking at and photographing Balck-eyed Susans as any flower, but I was disappointed that there was very little in bloom.

Then I stumbled upon this...

"Orchid!" I think I actually yelled it out loud.  If not, then I certainly screamed it loud enough in my brain.  I knew immediately that this flower was an orchid, but I didn't know which species.  It resembled the Lesser Purple Fringed Orchid (Platanthera psycodes) which I had found previously at the Chippewa Watershed Conservancy's Quigley Creek Preserve.  I was pretty sure this was a related species, but I didn't have a single field guide with me so identification would have to wait until I returned home.

I had to take dozens of pictures to make sure I got the identification correct.  Who am I trying to kid?  When I find an orchid I am going to take dozens of photos even if I know its identity with one hundred percent certainty.

After finding one orchid I was on a mission.  Could I find a second one?  The odds were probably not in my favor.  It was a big field and the orchids were shorter than most of the surrounding vegetation.  Then about twenty yards away I spotted this.

It was a second orchid and the flowers on this one were actually in much better condition.  This plant also had flowers that were more white than green so they stood out against the background better.  Amazingly both of these plants were located with a few feet of a mowed trail through the field!  This meant that I could plop down in the trail and photograph without crushing all of the nearby vegetation.  I did push the surrounding plants away to get a clear view of the orchids, but moved them back in place when I left so as not to draw unnecessary attention.

When I got back home it was easy to make an identification based on all the photographs.  My initial guess was that these were Prairie Fringed Orchids (P. leucophaea), but the fringe on the flowers was too finely cut.  That brought me to the Ragged Fringed Orchid (P. lacera).  This native species is widespread, but uncommon,  across the eastern half of the United States and Canada.  It has been recorded in every state east of the Mississippi River except Florida.  It has been found as far west as eastern Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.  In Michigan, it is found in fifty-three of the state's eighty-three counties.  It is typically found in moist to wet sites, including wet meadows, bogs, swamps, along the edges of wet forests.  The species is also known as the Green Fringed Orchid.