Great Orchid Hunt — About a Walk

Flowers are always a bonus when encountered on a hike. Hiking just to see flowers is also a thing, apparently. I had never gone on a hike to see a specific flower until this spring. I was visiting Tennessee when my Mother's hiking group was going to see Slipper Orchids (Cypripedioideae) aka "Lady Slippers" along the Twin Creeks Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I bummed a ride and we went on the hunt for the purple and yellow varieties.

Orchids (Family Orchidaceae) have always had a large fan base. Turns out that Slipper Orchids do too: Slipper Orchid Alliance. Your preferred search engine will direct you to many other such sites. Fandom is interesting as a cultural phenomena and it can be easy to slip into if you like to obsess over the nerdy specifics of a topic. (The fact that I like STTOS only slightly better that STTNG, associated with the fact that I reference them with their abbreviations, indicates that I have that tendency too.)

The Twin Creeks trail runs along a low woodland that has two creeks flowing in it. Aptly named, I'd say. The scenery is close-in eastern woodland with plenty of poison ivy crowding the sides of the trail. The trail itself is an old road that passes several ruined house foundations. It is also a utility corridor for overhead and underground utilities. So, we won't call it wilderness even though you could encounter a black bear and we did see some whitetail deer and a great blue heron.

But, on to the quarry at hand: Cypripedioideae!

We started our walk at the lower trailhead and our first encounter with the elusive veggie was a lone pink specimen just off the trail.

I did not have my photo scale with me, but the flower stem is about 12 to 14-inches long and the leaves cluster at the base of the flower stem. We found them in association with rotting logs. Not sure that association was anything more than coincidence, but it seemed fairly consistent on this day on this trail. The Wikipedia entry for Cypripedioideae notes that they, "are characterised by the slipper-shaped pouches (modified labellums) of the flowers – the pouch traps insects so they are forced to climb up past the staminode, behind which they collect or deposit pollinia, thus fertilizing the flower." Flowers are all about that lovely and joyous topic of sex. And in this case a bit of apparently harmless bondage too - Fifty Shades of Purple.

Further up the trail there is a stream crossing and with our shoes squishing quietly we stalked a herd of Cypripedioideae.

The convenient thing about plant hunting is that they can't hear, see or smell you coming and even if they could they can't run away. The perfect quarry. The septuagenarian hunters pulled out their cameras and bagged multiple views of each member of the herd while I documented the hunt.

The paths in the off-trail areas where the Cypripedioideae were hiding attested to the fact that we were not the first folks to enjoy these ridiculous flowers. So apparently there are many more who hike just to see flowers.

My feelings of success were short lived. One of our party reminded me that we had not seen the particularly elusive yellow variety, so the hunt intensified. We progressed along the trail inspecting likely hiding spots. Apparently most of the party was accepting the idea that we would not see the yellow version and only one of us ventured in to inspect the area where it was found. A shout of joy rang out and we followed her in to see. Behold!

The leaves of this species are placed all along the stem from the ground up to the flower. The flower itself has a more waxy surface appearance and an overall deeper color.

Not a bad haul for a day-long hunt but we also encountered some yellow Trillium that were quite nice.

It was a lovely day and great to spend time with my Mom and her hiking pals in the Smoky Mountains where I hiked as much as I could when I was growing up. The Smokies have a character all their own and I have a family connection to the land since relatives owned land within and immediately adjacent to the park prior to its establishment. My Grandfather worked in a logging camp in an area now within the park boundaries when he was a kid back in the 1920s. So those connections are always in my mind when I am walking in the Smokies and my own memories tend to flood to the front of my brain. It kind of feels like going back to childhood which is fun thing to do now and again since the memories have faded and it seems to have been an idyllic time; however, only a moment of rational thought erases the sentimental fog and I realize that the best day is always today. The best time is always right now.