The Quiet Picture

Yesterday was a total washout, it was pouring rain all day but I did actually go out with the camera. The film camera, that is – I had some frames left in the roll of Velvia, and the new greens were looking very lovely in the rain as the colours are always saturated under those conditions. Velvia + naturally saturated greens, will be interesting to see how the slides look like!

Today however, the rain was long gone. I needed to see what was happening with the lady slippers, but this year I will give the #1 lady slipper location a pass because I don’t want to wear out the delicate ground around the flowers. The place will be visited by a lot of people anyway because it’s probably the most famous lady slipper location around here, but the sad truth is that a photographer who sets down in one spot will wear out the ground more than a few people just walking through. I doesn’t matter how successful I am in avoiding any damage to the flowers, but the ground always ends up worse off for the deal. So that said, I drove to a location that I haven’t photographed at all yet. This new location is a host for lesser butterfly orchids as well and maybe some heath spotted orchids will show up later, but I haven’t seen other orchids here (unlike the #1 location where you can find five species).

The lesser butterfly orchids will bloom later than the lady slippers, so all I found was a few buds in roughly the same stage of development as the ones I have close to home. And then these lady slippers… I found them a bit strange. There were three flowers in what looked almost like over bloom, but they were somehow looking the wrong shape and size, a bit wrinkled even. And then there were about 15-20 buds in different stages of development, and a bunch of leaves only 10 cm high. It’s easy to spot the flowers and avoid stepping on them, but those small leaves had me moving around very carefully indeed so I wouldn’t trample them. Except that something had already been there and trampled on some of the plants, I doubt very much a human would’ve done it (I’m probably the first human here this year anyway) but I couldn’t quite figure out what animal it had been either. I will go back there next week of course, there should be many more lady slippers in bloom by then.

Happy with my discoveries so far (despite the wrinkly and trampled plants), I wanted to see if the early marsh orchids ssp. cruenta would show any buds yet. This is the other one of the two orchids that grows around Loos that I haven’t actually photographed here so I want to get those pictures this summer. I know it’s the same species regardless of where it’s photographed, but still, gotta get ‘em. Imagine how happy I was when I found one individual that was already in bloom!

The road to this location is in a poor condition so I parked my car when it still was good and walked the rest. On the way, I found a treat – early coralroot. It was totally unexpected, the early coralroot is not a rare orchid as such but it is very scattered so there’s no specific location for them like there is for most other orchids. They were too small though, but I was making plans to come back when I came across another early coralroot, and this one was already in bloom. Those two orchids I mentioned that I haven’t photographed around Loos yet… you know what the second one was? Early coralroot! I never thought I could get them both on the same day, especially when I didn’t even expect them to be flowering yet.

I’m happy. My Loos orchid collection is thus complete, now I just need to improve on them!

Time to wrap up this holiday, but I had plenty in store for today. First, I drove to Ramundberget and hiked the 3 km to Klinken. The black vanilla orchid (Gymnanedia nigra, or Nigritella nigra) should be in bloom and I was very curious to see how it was doing this year, last year I had only found four individuals. It was certainly more than four this year – I counted 29! Maybe I counted 2-4 of them twice, maybe I covered a slightly bigger area than last year, maybe they were blooming earlier this year… but whatever way you look at it, the vanilla orchid had multiplied in numbers. What have I said about 2009 being a good orchid year?

After Klinken, I drove to Rockvallen. For two reasons, first, to have a waffle at Knallen, and second, take a look around the marshland because this is normally a good place for orchids and other flowers. For the hike up to Knallen I decided to travel light and left the camera bag in the car, only had the G10 with me. It was such a liberation to be walking without that heavy pack on my back! All my photo excursions would be so much nicer if I could shave off a few kilos from the bag. But it means leaving behind the camera and tripod, which doesn’t make much of a photo excursion… Anyway, I took the shortcut to the Knallen cabin which means that the trail was a bit steep in the end, but the view was magnificent so I was only too happy to stop for a breather so I could take in the sights as well. The hike up there is well worth it, not just for the waffles but really just for the view. 360 degrees of mountains, it’s hard to beat – I can really recommend it if you’re ever around Bruksvallarna!

The marshland starts right from the parking lot, so when I got back down I swapped my hiking boots for wellingtons and G10 for the heavy gear and started zigzagging around the marsh. At a risk of repeating myself, there were plenty of orchids – mostly early marsh orchid ssp. cruenta and fragrant orchids, but also heath spotted and lapland marsh orchids. Seemed like it was a bit early in the season though, I didn’t see much else in bloom yet… or it could also be that I was so blinded by the orchids that I didn’t have eyes for anything else. I have another week of holiday in the middle of July so I will visit Rockvallen again, it’s hard to beat it for ease of access anyway so you don’t have to kill your feet to find the flowers!

It’s midsummer. What better way to use the day off than walk around a bog, in rain, looking for orchids and other plants? Well I couldn’t think of anything better anyway. And I mean that quite seriously!

The result was 7 individuals of early marsh orchid ssp. cruenta and about a dozen of early marsh orchid. You’d think that it’s not a lot and it actually isn’t, not for this large area that we covered. But I think that it’s part of the charm of these excursions, when you finally find one of those rare flowers it’s always a delight. If our bogs and forests were covered with orchids, then there wouldn’t be a need to search. And without searching, there wouldn’t be finding. And without searching and finding… where’s the joy?

What was a little bit surprising is that all the early marsh orchids we found (of either kind), none were blooming yet. The cold weather has slowed down the development considerably, so while in early June it seemed like all the flowers were about a week early, they now seem to be a week late instead.

One orchid that was blooming at its best though was the lesser twayblade (Listera cordata). It’s a very small flower and easy to miss where it’s growing among the grasses and mosses and whatnot in the forest. But once you get your eye trained on it, it seems to be popping up everywhere. The individual flowers are tiny – the stem is about 10-15 cm tall, so those flowers are just a few millimeters.

If yesterday was bad, then today was in even worse. More rain, more wind, and more cold. No point in taking the big camera today either, so I was travelling light with the G10 again. We found lots more orchids and a rare fern as well, but because orchids are closer to my heart than ferns, then the discovery that probably meant the most to me was the early marsh orchid ssp. cruenta. There are two known locations of this orchid around Loos and although I’ve seen it in several places in the mountains, it’s just simply different to see it here. It also completes one orchid landmark for me – I’ve now seen all the native orchids in Loos here in Loos.

And then there was this really rare orchid I found. It’s the only known individual of its kind – the triblade (Listera trivata)!

(Yes the last one is a bit of a botanists’ inside joke.)

There’s a couple of good orchid places close to hostel, so it was natural that I would start my morning there. Except, I had a slight disagreement with the book again so I skipped the first one, it just wasn’t worth figuring out why they want to me park all the way over there and then walk back on the road to… whatever obscure point they thought I should take over the barbed wire fence. Anyway, it was considerably more easy to find the second spot, and now I made a new discovery – the early marsh orchid ssp. ochroleuca (Dactylorhiza incarnata ssp. ochroleuca). I was also happy to see more of the marsh helleborine, it really is one beautiful orchid.

After Grodvät, I continued up to the northern tip of the Gotland main island. The wind was really beating the flowers and I had to stretch my patience almost to the limit to get a picture of something that may or may not have been an early marsh orchid. With hindsight, it was. And it was everywhere – I’ve never seen so many. Sadly, not many other orchids to be see, I think I was half blind because of all the purple flowers.

My feet were already starting to get tired, I guess I hadn’t quite recovered from yesterday and I’m a little bit out of shape (or a lot). So I decided that I will only do one more excursion today, and it had to be something that doesn’t require a long hike. Checking my notes, I found a promising spot and sure enough, it produced right away – a serendipity if there ever was one. Already when I got out of the car, I saw two people scanning the ground. So I walked up to them and asked if they had seen anything interesting, they confirmed what I had already noticed myself, it was very dry so the flowers are not so plentiful. As I was talking with them, I saw something bright green in the corner of my eye and we bent down to take a closer look – musk orchid (Herminium monorchis)! It had to be the smallest orchid I had ever seen, must be one of those flowers that are more common than you think because most of the time you just walk right past them without noticing.

I kept walking around the place and found lots of fly orchids and a surprising amount of marsh helleborine. Surprising, because it was bone dry, but this place apparently collects water if there’s a big downpour and then dries up again. Which you could see on the ground, it was dry mud. Just look at the background in the musk orchid picture above, that grey is natural – OOF dry mud.

Then I started having some doubts about the fragrant orchids (Gymnadenia conopsea) I was seeing everywhere. This place also hosts Gymnadenia odoratissima and I couldn’t remember how to tell them apart. So when I saw fragrant orchids that looked a bit different than what I’m used to seeing them, I just simply put my nose to use – I remembered reading that they smell different. And I thought I had found the other species, but then later on when I was reading the orchid book I found out that you can also tell them apart visually and I think I missed it this time. Maybe I came across a hybrid…

Tomorrow will be tough, especially the morning. The wind is really bad at the moment and it will keep up until tomorrow afternoon. And apparently it will also be raining. Not really made for flower photography… or landscapes either, for that matter.

Holiday. Now. I have been sooo tired lately, chronic tiredness that no amount of sleep or coffee can cure. My brain is tired, my body is tired, I even fell asleep on the bus. And I never sleep on the bus (or train or airplane or anything that moves, for that matter). For the past weeks all I’ve been wanting to do is to scream “I don’t care” to everyone who comes asking for anything. I didn’t quite scream, but I think my colleagues heard me say it a few times or many. That week’s holiday I had in May, it didn’t even make a dent. But now I have three weeks (and one day)!

I kicked off my holiday by searching for bog orchids. The book said that they are plentiful on this marsh, so I figured it shouldn’t be too hard to find them. As it turned out, it was. I didn’t find any. Plentiful? That’s just mean. I wasn’t seeing any orchids at all, just a few early coralroot in a forest next to the marsh and nothing else. Until this white thing poked out from the grass. The first white early marsh orchid (Dactylorhiza incarnata) I’ve ever seen! My disappointment at missing out on the bog orchids was immediately swept away. I had a look around but this was the only orchid I could see. A bit later I came across a normal coloured early marsh orchid, and then a bud of the same, but that’s really all I could find.

In the image, I experimented with the foreground. Instead of weeding out everything, I left some grass between the lens and the flower that created a texture around the orchid. I figured it works ok as long as nothing stands out, but I’m not entirely sure if I like it or not.

Finally, an overcast day with little wind! I had a list of eight flowers I should theoretically be able to shoot today, and when I finished my shooting, I had nine. Only four of them from my list, though! Amazing things happen… I wanted to shoot early marsh orchids and was happy to find them growing plentiful after last year, which seemed to have been an off-year for them. But I discovered something new – my #3 new orchid this year is a twayblade (Listera ovata)! I’m so proud I found it all by myself, after the two first ones which were shown to me.

Then I headed to the lesser butterfly orchid location to get some pictures in a more decent light than what I had on Friday. To get there, I have to walk a stretch through trail-less forest and I seem to be taking a different route every time because this time I came across something new. I had round-leaved wintergreens on my list, I didn’t shoot any such but now I got a green-flowered wintergreen instead! They were not in full bloom yet so I’ll be going back in a few days.

Having done the butterfly orchids, I dragged my gear up to the mine. There’s a patch of heath spotted orchids behind the main building and although it’s just about the most common orchid here, I don’t have any good pictures of it and this seemed like a perfect opportunity to get some. When I got there, I saw something bright orange at the edge of the forest – orange lilies growing here?! Well who am I to argue, of course I photographed them. And afterwards, find a co-operating heath spotted orchid to finish off my busy day. Except, I ended up with a common spotted orchid (Dactylorhiza maculata ssp. fuchsii) instead! This has always been something a grey area for me, I haven’t been 100% sure if I really had a common spotted orchid in my collection or not. But now, equipped with my new id skills, I am sure that I do.

Top left: twayblade; Top right: early marsh orchid
Bottom left: common spotted orchid; Bottom right: lesser butterfly orchid

Days just don’t get any better than this!

Dactylorhiza incarnata cruenta

• English: Early Marsh Orchid
• Swedish: Blodnycklar
• Finnish: Punakämmekkä

This is why I drive to the mountains to hunt flowers. To find species that we don’t get around here.. like the early marsh orchid. I have visited the mountains regularly since I moved to Sweden, but I didn’t discover the early marsh orchid until last year, and even then it was pointed out to me. Now I can recognise it with one hand tied behind my back. The other hand I need for turning the leaf to see if it has a dark underside!The funny thing is that I also seem to find some species in the mountains that I can’t find here, even though the distribution map shows that they should grow here. The early marsh orchid is however not one of them, as plentiful as it seems to be in the Härjedalsfjällen region. Or maybe you just need to know where to look…

* * *

Image specs: ISO 100, f5.00, 1/320, Canon 300mm f4L w/ 21mm ext. tube