The Quiet Picture

I think that summer just started for me. It’s green everywhere, the sunshine was warm today and I was attacked by swarms of mosquitoes in the forest. The day was so good that I’m not even complaining about the bites!

I drove back to the calypso orchids. There were in full bloom now, but I also found some buds. This time I counted 29 individuals and I also tried to keep track of the white vs coloured individuals and I guess it wasn’t quite fifty-fifty as I speculated last week. About one third of the flowers I found now were white. Sunny day as it was, I got a spotlight on one of the white ones while the background was shaded. Sometimes black backgrounds work and sometimes not, and in this case when the subject is white, it’s like an inverse silhouette!

Having done the macro, I tried a new thing – landscapes. Ok nothing new about it as such, but it certainly was the first time since the winter, apart from a few intimate landscapes here and there. I drove to one of the nice spots I found last year, this one north from Fågelsjö. It’s not an ideal location for the afternoon light because most of the photogenic scenery will be backlit, but the place is so good that there’s always something.

When I arrived, I was greeted by a family of canada goose. It’s also possible that they were urging on their young to swim faster to get away from me… anyhow, I soon found many more canada geese and I had my cup of coffee looking at the birds, they swam to a safe distance of about 50 metres and then they didn’t mind me anymore. Still too far for any meaningful photography, which didn’t matter because I didn’t have a long lens with me and even if I did, all the birds were backlit. So I could enjoy the coffee in peace and then concentrate on the landscapes, until a couple of the canada goose decide to swim right into my frame! They even quite generously stopped for a moment so I could get some pictures (granted, not much a bird picture but a fair environmental shot anyway) until they decided that I was really up to no good and they took off on wings.

Summer, no doubt about it!

I needed to check on the calypso orchid today. This is just the right time for them judging by the past 3 years, but it turned out that 2010 is a week behind. The very first thing I discovered when I got to the location was that it was wet – very wet. The water was streaming down the path at one point, I’ve never seen it this bad even if some water on the path is not unusual as such. But the calypso orchid wouldn’t be growing here if they didn’t like water, so I counted 20 individuals. However, only one or two of them were already in full bloom, and even that is probably a generous nomination. Give them some warm weather and I’m sure that they will look glorious in a week’s time, and there’s probably more of them, too. Considering how small some of the individuals were, there’s a good reason to believe that some hadn’t even popped above the ground yet.

I’ve heard that this location contains an unusually high number of white individuals. Every year there’s been quite a few of them, but I think that this year is exceptional for the colour variation. I didn’t keep exact numbers but it seemed like about half of the individuals I found were white.

The picture is playing a prank in my head, it looks like a big mouth with the tongue hanging out. I’m having a hard time seeing it as a rare and beautiful orchid now! Check my other calypso orchid posts to see what it should look like.

Very exciting day – looking for the ghost orchids (Epipogium aphyllum)! I really had been looking forward to seeing it, because these mysterious small pale orchids have become my favourites. Last year was spectacular for them so we didn’t dare to hope it would be equally good this year, but I think it turned out to be pretty close anyway. Last year we found a few groups with many orchids, this year the concentrations were much smaller but there were individuals scattered over a larger area, it was such a treat to be walking around the place and spot the flowers among the mosses and ferns. We checked out four ghost orchid locations in total, and found them in each – which wasn’t guaranteed at all, considering their nature. They can disappear for many years from a location and then suddenly pop up again when the conditions are right.

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I have been itching to go back to the Svartån location we visited last week, so I did that tonight. The volume of water had gone down considerably, just as predicted. Now it was possible to follow the creek on the cliffs surrounding the water, instead of making detours in the forest. I followed the creek up to where it finally levelled off, the next time I think I will follow it downstream. This visit confirmed the feeling I got the last time, the place is full of opportunities and even after 2.5 hours I had still only just scratched the surface. It’s not just the waterfalls but everything around them as well. You can use a wideangle to cram in as much as possible or you can concentrate on a single detail, and come back some other time and do it all over again because it will have changed. Marvellous!

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SVT Gävledala hade ett inslag om Hamra NP i måndags. De hade filmat vid Svartån, men jag kan inte avgöra om de filmat precis här eller hittat mer klipphällar annanstans längs Svartån… i så fall, var var det?

Some wise photographer once said that if your pictures are not good enough, then you’re not close enough. I wholeheartedly subscribe to that, so when it was time to photograph the creeping lady’s-tresses orchids (Goodyera repens), I focused as close as the macro lens allowed and now I finally have some pictures of this orchid that I’m reasonably happy with. The previous effort is from three years ago when I used the 300mm lens, which is too big a tool for small flower.

I found an individual which was growing a little bit bent, while another orchid was filling the background. Then I noticed that I could also focus in on the background orchid with the foreground individual partially hiding it. So this version is not as close as it gets, but least it’s a little bit different. Well, I haven’t seen a picture like this of a creeping lady’s-tresses orchid anyway!

The reason why my summer vacation is split like this is that I wanted to find the alpine chamorchis (Chamorchis alpina). I think I still made a mistake, it felt like this week would be too early for it, but I had to try anyway. If I can’t find it now, I can take a weekend in August to come back for another try (does that sound obsessed?).

I knew that the orchid was very small, so I was getting a bit daunted by my task… Torkilstöten may not be big, but everything is relative. So I hiked up to the pass and starting searching. Very soon I came across a small thing growing next to a small-white orchid and I stopped to take a closer look at this what I thought was an unusually stunted, withered small-white orchid. Except it wasn’t stunted, it wasn’t withered, and it sure wasn’t a small-white orchid! Can you believe it, I had found my alpine chamorchis!!! After letting out a cry of joy, I got down to photograph it. Not so easy because the wind was really hard, it kept moving even this tiniest of orchids. I knew I wasn’t getting any good pictures but you know I really couldn’t have cared less.

Close to this first alpine chamorchis that I saw was another, even smaller – this was definitely early season for them. So that was two individuals and when I looked around me at the mountain landscape, I was wondering if I could find any more. It is certainly hard to spot it if it grows among anything green, this one I found was growing in a “bald” spot so it caught my eye just enough to be curious to take another look. I continued my way towards the peak of Torkilstöten, now that I didn’t have the pressure of finding any orchids I just wanted to see the view from the top; this is as close as you can get to Helags by car and then it’s just the short hike up. The clouds had cleared a bit so I took a series of pictures for a panorama stitch. I wasn’t sure if it was going to work though, the wind was really hard so I suspected that it would cause enough vibration in the rig to blur the shots. But wind is not all bad. No bugs!

When I started my way down, almost immediately I saw something…. alpine chamorchis? Oh yes it is! This time I took a shot with my bubble level next to it, to give an idea of the size. And close by, yet another orchid. So the grand total of alpine chamorchis I found today was four. But still… I can’t believe I found it at all. I’m telling you, it’s small, the tiniest orchid I’ve ever seen.

When I was walking down, I was becoming increasingly aware that my left foot was hurting. The leg had felt a bit stiff this morning but the morning’s short hike seems to have aggravated it. But as long as I can walk, no worries! All this worrying I did about the car… and then I injured myself, LOL!

It was time for another excursion to find some local rarities. There’s a place near by with both narrow-leaved marsh orchid (Dactylorhiza traunsteineri) and hairy butterwort (Pinguicula villosa), so that’s where we headed. When we got closer to the location, we started seeing a lot of early marsh orchids. Soon the early marsh orchids started taking on some strange characteristics, like spots on the leaves. And soon after that we found individuals that couldn’t possible be early marsh orchids, so that’s when we had found our narrow-leaved marsh orchids! And pretty soon after that – a lot of them. And I do mean a lot! I have never seen orchids here in Loos in such numbers as we were witnessing now. There’s no way a picture can make justice to the scene, I tried but it was hopeless, you just simply have see it yourself to appreciate the full glory. Narrow-leaved marsh orchids and fragrant orchids were the dominant species and their purple and pink colours provided a wonderful contrast to the white and fluffy cotton deergrass (Trichophorum alpinum). The larger white blobs in the picture are broad-leaved cottongrass (Eriophorum latifolium).

We then walked around this corner of the marsh (it was a big marsh, but only part of it is botanically interesting) to see what else we could find, mostly we just came up with young bog orchids. After a well deserved coffee break, we tried to look for the hairy butterwort but had to conclude that we were out too late – all the common butterworts were way over bloom and the hairy butterwort probably shares the timing. And then when we heard the thunder, and it started raining – pouring – it was time to call it a day. We had already been out for 7 hours and enjoyed every minute of it!

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A few weeks ago when we found the early marsh orchid ssp. cruenta here, I mentioned that I had now seen all the orchids that grow in the Loos region locally. Which obviously wasn’t entirely true, because I had forgotten all about the narrow-leaved marsh orchid!

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!

After a few days of rest at home, I’m back in Funäsdalen. I started by taking the northern road to Ljungdalen, I knew the new road was finished so I was curious to see it and it was also nice to be driving it westward, can’t remember if I’ve ever done it before… normally when I take this route, I’m on my way home. Anyway, I can definitely recommend the road, maybe it’s nothing out of the ordinary but it’s worth the detour at least once. You start seeing the mountains nice and early, with a few really photogenic spots along the way.

In Ljungdalen, I headed straight to Torkilstöten. The snowfields are getting smaller and I was absolutely sure that the mountain avens would be blooming now a week later, and yes indeed they are. I was happy! After that, I checked out a couple of places for lapland marsh orchids and early marsh orchids ssp. cruenta. I knew these places to be good especially for the lapland marsh orchid and oh boy was there ever so much of them… And as always, when I took a closer look at some orchids which looked a bit unusual, I started wondering which species it really was. A light version of a lapland marsh orchid? A darker version of heath spotted orchid? Or something in between? By the time I got down to photograph the early marsh orchid ssp. cruenta, I was totally confused. You can be dead cert you’re looking at a cruenta when the leaves are spotted or completely dark on both sides. But if you just look at the flowers – like I did through the viewfinder – I couldn’t really tell the difference from some individuals of lapland marsh orchids. Which I knew must be lapland marsh orchids because the colour was right, and spots only on the upper side of the leaves… dactylorhiza is by far the most difficult orchid genus to make sense of!

After all the hyping I’ve done about the lesser butterfly orchid, I’m almost afraid to show the picture – risk for an anti-climax! But here’s the deal. I wanted to get a good close-up – a real macro, in fact – of the flower and the long spur. But showing the flower and its spur would require a side view and I don’t think it works, so the option was to find two flowers where one is shown from front and then the other one only by its spur. I was going to get all the petals in the frame but accidentally pushed the camera too close and got this “clipped” version and liked it, so I figured it’s worth trying. The question is, does the oof spur carry the dead space on the left or is this just weird? I have versions where all the petals are in, as I originally intended.

I have another idea I need to try with these orchids, but it requires that I go to another location and I didn’t feel like walking that far (uh… less than 1 km) in the oppressive heat. Instead, I drove to my favourite bog to see how all the other orchids were coming along, and was pleasantly surprised. For example, two weeks ago I didn’t see any early marsh orchid buds but now the place was suddenly dotted purple with them, certainly more of them than I’ve ever seen here. But the most exciting discovery by far – a common spotted orchid (Dactylorhiza fuchsii)! Many times I’ve seen heath spotted orchids (Dactylorhiza maculata) here which are very close to the commons but this is the first time I’m sure. I’ve mentioned it before, there is a very fuzzy line where heath (maculata) ends and common (fuchsii) begins. The biologists can’t even agree if they’re a different species at all… but that makes orchids all the more interesting. They are a relative new-comer in the plant world and are evolving right in front of our eyes!

I’ll be off on a short holiday now, probably no Internet access. I will be able to send tweets from my mobile though, my latest tweet can be seen here in the blog lower down in the right margin. Now you’ll be wondering why on earth I have Twitter when hardly anyone is reading this blog either, but I figured it would be nice to have – I can update it from my mobile so I can send tweets about my whereabouts. In case I fall down and hit my head and can’t call anyone, the latest tweet will tell the rescue patrol approximately where I am. Provided that anyone reads this blog, anyway, because I forgot to tell anyone in person that this is my new safety line. LOL!

Had one last look at the lesser butterfly orchids. They are finally starting to open, but out of the 21 individuals that I found (11 of them about 100 meters from my house, I think this is a new location for them, very exciting!), 2 were in full bloom and the rest were varying degrees of buds. So I can stop worrying now, there will be butterfly orchids left for me to photograph even when I come back from my vacation. The reason I’m making such a big deal out of them is that I haven’t photographed them with the 150mm macro yet, and then there’s the fact that they are just so beautiful! What more reason do I need?

The heath spotted orchids are also starting to bloom. It’s the most common orchid in this region, but I’ll never be blasé about any orchid!