Last summer, I described the elusive cranefly orchid, Tipularia discolor (see Flora in the Aug. 2, 2007 issue of The Carrboro Citizen). I’m as excited about its once-a-year flowering recurrence now as last summer. If you didn’t catch them last year, I encourage you to search for them now while they’re in peak bloom. This beautiful little native terrestrial orchid is common in both piney woods and deciduous forests. You’ll need your keen eyes to spot them. The single two-to-four-inch leaf – green above, burgundy below – grows close to the ground from September through March. It captures the winter sunlight. Without that leaf showing, the 12-to-18-inch-tall stem of 20 to 40 tiny greenish-brown orchid flowers are even more difficult to spot. The discovery is definitely worth lying on the ground with a hand lens for a closer look.
Last week, I was thrilled to discover 37 plants in a shady front yard under my care. They were emerging from a dense cover of poison ivy and English ivy. The poison ivy I respect and try to avoid, but am content to live with since it is a beneficial wildlife food plant and it goes dormant during the winter. The English ivy, however, is an evergreen, non-native plant that eventually smothers all vegetation beneath it, even covering and breaking tree limbs and shrubs.
Several years ago, in this yard now full of cranefly orchids, I made a deliberate effort to eliminate the English ivy. English ivy only bears flowers and fruit when it is allowed to climb high in trees.
Otherwise, it spreads along the ground smothering every plant in its forward crawl. I stopped the production of seed by severing all the high-climbing vines on the trees. I thought I had effectively smothered most of the ivy on the ground by laying down cardboard and covering it with several inches of wood chips. I deliberately left a few openings, hand pulling the ivy in those spots, where there were a couple of winter leaves of the cranefly orchid.
The decaying cardboard and wood chip mulch must have been good for the orchids. I have enjoyed watching the orchid population increase during the past couple of years. I was only casually aware that the evergreen ivy was slowly creeping back from the edges where it had not been covered.
Accompanying my delight with this season’s abundance of orchids was a realization that last year’s sparse covering of ivy had, just within the current growing season, reclaimed the entire ground with a thick layer of foliage ready to smother all those orchid leaves that will emerge at summer’s end to search in vain for winter sunlight.
Never turn your back on English ivy. I have already renewed my assault on that ivy patch. This time, I will persist, knowing that my reward will be the rescuing of a robust population of that beautiful little orchid.
The intent of The Citizen’s Flora column is to feature the diversity and heritage of our native plants. All too often, it seems appropriate to feature some of the invasive, non-native plants that threaten the natives.
Note: Good resources are the North Carolina Botanical Garden’s “Controlling Invasive Plants†(free) and the garden’s website, www.ncbg.unc.edu for more images of the cranefly orchid.