Day 225: I spent several hours this morning heaving myself over wet logs and crawling around on the forest floor in search of Corallorhiza trifida. I found three stems, two at one location and a single at another. While not the rarest of Mount Rainier National Park's Orchids, C. trifida is far less common than most. If memory serves, the highest annual census my botany partners and I have recorded was just under thirty stems, in a year when all evidence pointed to an abundance of mycorrhizal activity. Trifida has been on the wane for the last few years, but it can remain dormant for prolonged periods until conditions coincide to meet its requirements. Its range of mycoheterotrophic partners is substantially lower than that of the more common Corallorhizas (e.g., maculata and mertensiana) which may be due in part to the decay of vascular plant debris from its associated species. The web is quite complex. Simplified, it can be said that soil, light and humidity conditions must be met in order for particular vascs to take hold, and unless plant debris is present from those species, the specific mycorrhiza cannot thrive. A mycoheterotrophic plant cannot grow without its partner, so all the pieces of the puzzle must fall into place at once. Of course, this project is doomed from the get-go without seed from the orchid and...wait, how did it get there? I feel as if we're discussing the chicken and the egg. Suffice to say that coming home with mud up to my knees, a wealth of bruises and scrapes on my legs and moss stains ground into my skin is a small price to pay for finding three stems of Corallorhiza trifida.
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