Orchids in the Wild... an article in the Quad-City Times by Alma Gaul, Sunday, March 18, 2001

Native Plants Are Protected by Group.....
Walk into a certain woods in Rock Island County in May and look closely at the ground.
If you're lucky, you might spot a yellow-blooming flower, surrounded by a .... cage.

The flower is the yellow ladyslipper orchid and the cage is there to protect it from being eaten to the nub by a hungry deer, which could kill the unusual plant. With the cage, the plant will thrive and possibly reproduce, boosting the beauty and biological diversity of this particular woods. Caging has been a quiet 10-year project of the Conservation Committee of the Illowa Orchid Society, a 120 member group of Quad-City area enthusiasts. It was started by Marcia Whitmore, who first noticed the orchids while out "wildflowering"; that is, tramping through woods, looking, identifying and taking photos.

She also noticed deer-damage, so she launched the conservation project and secured a $1,000 grant from the American Orchid Society to help pay for the cage materials, and for education programs to spread the word about native orchids.

Many people think of orchids only in terms of the tropics or greenhouse settings, but orchids are native throughtout the world, including the midwest. While most of the tallgrass prairie and woodlands that existed in Illinois and Iowa at the time of European settlement have been destroyed, orchids still grow in both states where fragments of their habitat remain. Botanists have recorded 30 species of orchids in Iowa and 43 in Illinois (almost all those found in Iowa plus about a dozen more), says Bohdan Dziadyk, botanist and prairie specialist at Augustana College, Rock Island.

Projects such as that undertaken by the Illowa group help preserve and expand these fragile stands; in 10 years, the number of ladyslippers has increased three-fold.

"Originally there were eight different sites with a few plants at each site," Whitmore says. "Now there are more sites and many more plants at each site."

In addition to identifying, caging and staking, the group has pollinated the plants using toothpicks to encourage the production of seed "in case the bees don't come" and thus encourage the plants to spread. The seed are as fine as pepper and a majority never grow. Since work began, Whitmore has identified three other orchids in this particular woods:

.....the showy orchid, Galearis spectabilis, a little hooded pink orchid that blooms around the first of June.

.....the small twayblade, Liparis lilifolia, a small, unspectacular orchid that doesn't bloom every year.

.....and the putty root, Aplectrum hyamale, which blooms the first week in June with a thumb-sized green and tan flower shaped like the cattleya, the orchid commonly used in corsages.

Whitmore wants to keep the this location secret so that unscrupulous people don't go out and dig up the orchids.


Such vandalism is a double tragedy: not only is the woods deprived of its diversity, but the plants die because they need the exact conditions of the woods to live.

"The roots form an association with the fungi in the soil; they produce fungal threads for the uptake of water and nutrients," Dziadyk says.

"They are the most exacting of all plant groups."

Removal also is illegal; all orchids are protected by state law and some are federally protected as endangered species.

Munson Cemetery...

A federally protected orchid that grows in the Quad City region is the white prairie fringed orchid (Platanthera leucophaea). It is found in the Munson Township Cemetery, a five acre pioneer cemetery that is a virtually undisturbed prairie remnant north of Cambridge, Illinois.

In 1983, the cemetery was designated an Illinois Nature Preserve, in a program administered by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. The program sets aside land that retains characteristics that would have been there before European contact.

The cemetery is owned by Munson Township and maintained by the NAGS...Natural Area Guardians, which is a subcommittee of the Henry County Soil and Water Conservation District, a state agency.



The group burns the area annually and chops out any trees or shrubs that take root. It also hosts an annual wildflower walk; this year's walk will be held the last weekend of June when the prairie is at the height of its beauty.

Fast Facts on Orchids

Orchids (orchidaceae) comprise the largest family of flowering plants in the world, with 30,000 recorded species. Of those, 85-90 percent grow in tropical areas.

Orchid blossoms are distinguished by three sepals and three petals. One petal, called the lip, always has a special shape. It may be long and narrow, wide with a fringe, or shaped like a pouch.

In cool regions, orchids grow in the ground. But in tropical lands, many kinds of orchids grow high on the branches of trees as epiphytes.

One of the best known orchids is vanilla, which produces the beans that make the flavoring used in food and beverages.

Return to Illowa Orchid Society Homepage

photos and page by Marcia Whitmore