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Exploring West Virginia’s native orchid species takes patience and care.
This story was originally published in the April 2015 issue of Wonderful West Virginia.
written and photographed by Ed Rehbein
The mountains of West Virginia are famous for their commanding vistas, wild white water, and sprawling canyons. But not all the outdoor attractions in the state are grandiose. West Virginia also hosts some dazzling yet dainty beauties—native orchids. Worldwide, orchids are prolific. With about 26,000 species, orchids are one of the two largest flowering plant families in the world, comprising 10 percent of the world’s plant species. Despite their great numbers worldwide, West Virginia’s native orchid species number in the dozens. Because of their beauty and rarity, native orchids are subject to picking or digging for transplant, which drastically reduces their numbers and can endanger the survival of species.
“The entire orchid family, including all orchids native to the United States and its territories, is protected by international law,” says Elizabeth Byers, senior wetland scientist with the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection. “Collection in the wild and loss of habitat from human disturbance have led to the decline of orchids throughout the world, including West Virginia.” More than half of West Virginia’s 48 native orchid species are imperiled or vulnerable in the state, she says, and state and federal laws protect wild orchids in state parks and federal lands. Moreover, it is illegal to pick any wildflowers on private land without the landowner’s consent. Though they should never be picked or dug up, orchids are stunning subjects for photography, and orchid images can be enjoyed and shared long after the flowers are found.
Cranberry Glades Botanical Area
“Most people think seeing orchids requires long hikes into wilderness or crawling through rhododendron thickets,” says avid orchid enthusiast Charles Garratt. “But the roadside botanist can see up to a dozen species of native orchids from the road and on short, easy walks in the area of the Cranberry Wilderness.” As the Cranberry Mountain Nature Center’s volunteer orchid expert, Garratt often leads nature hikes to look for orchids at the Cranberry Glades Botanical Area, which sits just over 20 miles east of Richwood. The area is a hot spot for native orchids in West Virginia, covering 750 acres to protect the largest area of bogs in the state.
The bogs at Cranberry Glades are more typical to northern climates and host a variety of unusual plant species—even two carnivorous plants. But the open bogs also host some exquisite orchids, such as the grass pink orchid. This flower forms a slender stem growing up to a foot tall, with up to six magenta-colored flowers dangling gently from the central stalk. Preferring the wet acid soils found in places like bogs and swamps, the grass pink orchid thrives at Cranberry Glades and is commonly found in the Flag Glade portion of the glade boardwalk.
The rose pogonia is also found in the Flag Glade and in the larger Round Glade. It only blooms in Pocahontas, Randolph, and Hampshire counties in West Virginia, but Pocahontas County, home of the Cranberry Glades, is the best known location. The scientific name for the plant is pogonia ophioglossoides, meaning “bearded snake tongue.” This explains the common name “snake mouth orchid,” which refers to the crested and fringed lip of the flower. The plant is small and forms a single stem reaching four to 12 inches high. Each stem supports a single flower.
These and other plants like a large purple fringed orchid can best be found between the last week of June and first week in July, Garratt says. Take a look along State Route 39/55, the forest service road following the Williams River, or on the boardwalk at the Cranberry Glades.
Highland Scenic Highway Area
The Highland Scenic Highway winding through the mountains of Pocahontas County is well known for its views, but few pull off the roads to check out the many wildflowers dotting its ditches. A member of the orchid family called nodding ladies’ tresses grows abundantly along the highway in September, but its cousin, the large round-leaved orchid, is rarer.
One location where the orchid can be found is on the banks of Forest Road 216 in the Monongahela National Forest. Standing a foot and a half tall and sporting just two large round basal leaves, this flower is unusual because of its colors—green and white. The plant forms a raceme, a long cluster of flowers circling a single stalk, with each flower suspended on its own short stalk. This orchid thrives in dark, mature hemlock woods and blossoms in late June.
New River Gorge
Puttyroot is a modest looking orchid, but a native orchid nonetheless. They’ve been spotted blooming in May around the New River Gorge at the Nuttallburg mine and at Grandview National Park. At Grandview the flamboyant showy orchis can also be found on the road to Turkey Spur, identifiable by its magenta and white blooms dangling from a four- to 12-inch spike. The yellow fringed orchid is also a worthy find, found in some unexpected places. Instead of happening upon them on a forest trail, I’ve spotted them twice in clearings below power line rights-of-way on Beauty Mountain and on the Bridge Trail of the New River Gorge.
Lady’s Slippers
Named for their resemblance to a small shoe, lady’s slippers are especially fine examples of the delicate beauty of orchids. The genus name for lady’s slippers is Cypripedium, meaning “Venus foot.” They come in colors of pink, yellow, white, and white and pink.
Pink lady’s slippers, also called moccasin flowers, seem to be the easiest to find. The main body of a pink lady’s slipper, the “shoe,” is quite thin, seeming to luminesce in direct sunlight. Growing in most of the mountainous counties of West Virginia, they are usually found under oak or pine trees. A good time to find them blooming is mid-May at Blackwater Falls State Park and Babcock State Park.
Yellow lady’s slippers are not as common in West Virginia as the pink variety, but their bright yellow pouch is easy to spot. In the Appalachian Mountains, their blooming times vary from mid-April to June depending on location. The best time to look for yellow lady’s slippers in West Virginia is mid-May.
The aptly named showy lady’s slippers are perhaps the most eye-catching of all. In Native Orchids of the Southern Appalachian Mountains, author Stanley Bentley writes: “The petals and sepals are the purest white, except for the slipper, with its fine texture of smooth velvet, which exhibits the most exquisite pinkpurple hues known to abide in nature.” But with only two known sites in West Virginia—Greenbrier and Tucker counties—the showy lady’s slipper is also rare. This flower is classified as critically imperiled in West Virginia. Loss of habitat, increasing deer populations, and picking and digging by humans have contributed to their scarcity.
Digging up, picking, or trampling wild orchids reduces their ability to reproduce and can damage their long-term survival in an area, Byers says, and most orchids do not survive being transplanted because they depend on symbiotic relationships with fungi and soil in their native habitat. “A wild orchid glimpsed along a trail or in the woods brings pleasure to many people,” she says. “It is a precious part of our state heritage and should be left in its natural setting as a true expression of ‘wild and wonderful’ West Virginia.”
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