Hunting Orchids

On June 8, 1978 I was working in an area of northcentral Pennsylvania known as the Muncy Hills. The acidic soils on the hills are derived from the shale bedrock and are easily eroded. Nonetheless, most of the hilltops were cleared and farmed – for a generation or two. Many of those old farms were abandoned and reverted to forest, others were planted to trees in the 1930s, still others are now used to grow Christmas trees while some, after applications of significant quantities of lime and fertilizer still grow corn and soybeans.

On that day in 1978 I came upon pink lady’s-slippers – hundreds and hundreds of them – in bloom, covering the ground in one of the red pine plantations –

It was absolutely spectacular, with an abundance of nature’s bouquets of a native orchid that’s usually found as scattered single plants –

In the intervening 45 years the property has changed hands, a logging road was constructed nearby and, since the red pine had been planted on an unsuitable site, most of the trees in the plantation have died and been replaced by black birch and red maple.

Forests are dynamic ecosystems: species' abundance change, trees die, seedlings grow and human-induced changes occur with increasing frequency as the climate warms and rainfall patterns alter.

Recently I returned to the hilltop that had once been a field, then a pine plantation and is now a birch-maple forest to find the pink lady’s-slipper. The hundreds of lady’s-slippers were nowhere to be seen, instead there were only three flowers to be found among 74 widely scattered plants –

So the spectacular display of 45 years ago is gone and the ecosystem where it was has changed. But somewhere out there in the natural world there may well be a comparable abundance of pink lady’s-slippers – I’ll keep hunting for them.