Hunting for Orchids in the Rocky Mountains

If National Geographic wanted to pick up a team of hard-core botanists to track down rare plants in the wilderness for an action-adventure educational show, my co-workers and I would be the perfect option. (We also already have code names picked out). So a little bit of background if you’re new, I’m currently in Montana for the summer working for the National Forest Service on the botany crew with five other amazing co-workers who I’ll be referring to by the following code-names.

Our cast of characters features:

Myself aka Fern Girl: who’s the youngest, still in college, always up for an adventure, on a steep learning curve but up for the task, and not afraid to get a little dirty.

Katydid: the oldest on the crew, a super sweet woman and the only original Montanain on the crew. She has an adorable dog, chickens, makes her own sourdough, and has a calming and centering personality that holds the crew together.

Then there's’ the botany boys:

Baker: A true Cali boy with a mullet, passion for plants, relaxed personality and was a professional baker for a few years and makes the most delicious chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever eaten (though my friend Danielle’s brown butter chocolate chip cookies are a close contender)

The Pit: a recent grad from Washington who is over 6 ft tall and always has a grocery bag full of snacks and is constantly eating (hence the nickname as his stomach seems to be a bottomless pit) and is fit as heck from all the hiking + fast metabolism.

Slayer (of Knowledge): The most enthusiastic of the crew and passionate about all things nature, Slayer is super knowledgeable about insects, birds, plants, geology...basically anything related to the outdoors. He’s super sweet and has a happy-go-lucky and slightly sarcastic sense of humor, making him super fun to work with. He also loves to forage and brought me rhubarb and wild targoon (yum)!

Fighting Fig: Fueled by Nature’s Heart Fig Bars (literally this boy eats like 4+ of these a day), Fig is an endurance hiker, skiier, roller skater, unicycles, strength trains, and is living out of his car this summer. He visits a new place every weekend to hike or teleski mountains and has been all over the country. Originally from Massachusetts, we’ve bonded over the east coast and the fact that we’re both constantly traveling, out and about, and also fellow vegetarians/vegans.

So now that the players have been introduced, here’s what we’ve been up to lately. This season besides the normal survey work the forest has gotten extra funding to do rare plant monitoring. We’ve been following records of previous sightings of rare plants throughout the forest and heading back to these various locations to map the plant populations using GIS/GPS tablets to make polygons of the geographic extent of the species, noting changes over time compared to previous records to now, habitat changes, population counts, associated species, potential threats, species health, and recording new sightings of the plants. Pretty cool stuff, to be honest. Seriously, almost every day I go to work I can’t believe I got this incredible job...for the most part. (There’s been a few rough/long days).

These past two weeks at work have been crazy, from a four day camping trip to the Little Belts (mountain range) last weekend trekking through rivers and forests to find a rare species of columbine (Aquilega brevistayla) to this week where we were driving two hours there and back (4 hrs/day) into the Rocky Mountains to hunt down four different unusual orchids. We averaged anywhere from 4 to 12 miles a day hiking through the wilderness and gained anywhere from 400 ft to 2000+ feet of elevation. We crossed streams, slid down cliffs, got blisters and scrapes, walked through too many spider webs to count, ran into elk, stepped over snakes, worked through multiple thunderstorms and 90+ (F) degree heat, and battled with technological issues throughout the entire week.

One man we encountered in the woods who was curious to know what we were up to jokingly said, “You guys have it easy! Those wildlife people have to constantly follow animals, at least your plants don’t move!” Well sir, unfortunately that itself can be a problem when the plants are on the other side of the lake and you don’t have a boat so you have to cross three ridges with no trail other than what may be a deer path full of dead fall…..Also plants do move, just a lot slower than animals. Some of the polygons we were looking at were “mapped” back in the 40’s, 50’s, and most recently the 90’s, and the geography and ecology has changed drastically since then as the landscape changed.

This week, all of the orchids we were looking for favor wet habitats, mostly near creeks and in marshes or fens. A few points we went to were no longer wet as the creeks had dried up or they had shifted a quarter to half a mile further down the mountain. In another example, one of the orchid populations that was mapped in the 90’s was noted to be near the creek on a slope...well that slope had caved in during what was likely a landslide as the bottom bank was super loose sand and an entire section of the bank had collapsed, likely burying our orchids with it.

At the same time, we saw parts of the wilderness few people ever go to, listened to the birds sing, saw incredible plant and insect diversity, had summit or ridge-top lunches, jumped in the creek after the day was done, worked together to get s*** done, and cheered each other on when things got tough. And yes, we did (for the most part) find the orchids we were looking for.

Pictures above of Cypripedium parviflorum (yellow lady’s slipper), Cypripedium passerinum (sparrows egg lady slipper), and Amerorchis rotundifolia ( small round leaved orchid). The last orchid we were looking for, Epipactis gigantea (stream orchid) a few of my coworkers found but I was working on a different set.

Overall a very eventful week. Arduous (the couple 10 mile days with lots of stream crossing or ridge crossings were a bit rough, especially the over 13 hr work day on Tuesday) but fun for the most part. Next week half of the crew will be staying in the area to finish up the Rocky Mountain Orchid surveying, and myself plus two of the botany boys will be headed to Idaho to help out with a survey project in the Nez Perce Wilderness. Exciting!!