Cranberry Glades Botanical Area

June 29, 2020

Another trip to the Cranberry Glades. This time with the Monday Morning Hikers to see the orchids that bloom about this time.

The boardwalk is beginning to get overgrown. This year everything seems to be about 2 weeks behind what I'm used to - probably because of that cold snap in early May.

Yew Creek in the early summer.

We came here to see orchids. This is the Grass Pink Orchid.

A close-up of a Grass Pink Orchid flower. It's unusual to have the stamens (pollen) and pistil (ovary) at the top of the flower, rather than as a lip at the bottom.

Another showy orchid is the Large Purple-Fringed Orchid. Usually we can also find Rose Pogonia this time of year, but we only saw a few, and they were too distant from the boardwalk to get a photo.

My favorite plants here are the insectivorous ones. Pitcher plant (Sarracenia purpurea) flowers were very abundant this year.

A closer look at these unusual flowers.

And a closer look at the pitchers - leaves at the base of the plant that capture insects. The inside of the pitcher has backward-pointing hairs that keep insects from crawling away from their doom. (The small pink flowers in the foreground at left and right are cranberries. See below.)

Another insectivorous plant is the sundew. These tiny pad leaves (10 mm, 1/2 inch across) capture insects on their sticky hairs.

This is the Small Cranberry - the namesake of the Cranberry Glades. They are easy to overlook because they are so so small. In the fall the flowers will have become small red cranberries (edible).

Bee-Balm (also known as Oswego Tea) was just beginning to open up. In a few days it will be a spectacular red flower.

The boardwalk is only a half-mile long, so we had plenty of time to also walk along the Cowpasture Trail. I've been to the Cranberry Glades many time with the Field Ecology Summer Regional Governor's School, but we've never had the opportunity to take any of the many other trails in the area.