I’ll NEVER Dance For Rain Again (Or: “Some Like It Wet”)

Well…. you can blame it on Climate Change if you like, although as I learned as a child; April Showers Bring May Flowers.

But hold on a sec, it’s almost August, not April isn’t it? And except for a week or so, it has rained every day up here on this mountain. It’s easy to complain, but why bother, you can’t do anything about it so let’s roll with the punches. (Sorry for all the clichés, but they all seemed so appropriate in the moment.)

Accepting the Yin/Yang of life and gardening, I’m OK with that and so are “most” of the plants that I am a slave to. That’s one of the wonderful “Miracles” of the plant world, there are plants for every location and every situation. There’s another clever cliché in a gardeners lingo and that’s “Right Plant, Right Place”.

Let’s visit a few of our chlorophyll laden, native friends that enjoy it a bit on the moister side or as we say in “Plant World”, that they “Like Wet Feet”. (Another cliché?)

Hey, how bout some Orchids? Ya know, it still surprises me how taken aback most folks are to find out that right here in Greenbrier County, we have over 20 species of naturally occurring, native orchids. Now you have to remove the image from your consciousness of the typical “Prom Corsage”, which are usually in the genus “Cattleya”. Plants are classified into families, mostly based on their floral structure and sexual parts. If you pull out your 10 X hand lens, an inexpensive tool that is a requirement on all woodland hikes and explorations, you’ll notice that the floral structure of our native orchids are identical to those “Prom Corsages” just in miniature. Think, “Honey, I Shrunk The Flowers.”  (hope you get that reference, if not, ask me.)

Many of our native orchids favor, as I mentioned above, “getting their feet wet”, some, but not all. It’s like the “Subtitle” of this story, an intentional, blatant, cinematic reference to the classic, 1959, hit movie directed by Billy Wilder, starring Tony Curtis, Jack Lemon and Marilyn Monroe, “Some Like It Hot”! If you’ve never seen this film, you must!

One of the showiest of our native orchids is Platanthera grandiflora, actually, I could say that the name says it all, grandiflora! Commonly known as the “Greater purple fringed bog-orchid”, the flower is quite grand, a real eye-catcher, from the purple-lavender color to the lovely fringing on the edges of the flower and the long lasting bloom. .

Another of my favorites is the genus Spiranthes. In WV, we have 5-7 species in the genus Spiranthes. Now, here is another “Name says it all plant”, If you look closely at the image, you’ll notice that the individual florets spiral around the flower stem. Not only that, but on this particular species, Spiranthes cernua f. odorata, the individual florets are “nodding” hence the word cernua in the name which means nodding in Botanical Nomenclature. Are you following along? The f. is a reference to the word “form, as since this particular “form’ of the species is fragrant and I can attest to the fact that it smells like Vanilla Extract, delightful!

How bout those skunks? No, not the “Peppy La Pew” type, remember we’re still in the plant world here. Symplocarpus foetidus aka “Skunk Cabbage” is a real swamp lover. The best place to see them around here, and they are quite common if  you’re out looking for them, is around the boardwalk in the “Cranberry Glades”. They can be quite imposing if they are in the wet constantly. I’ve see specimens the size of a Subaru up there. And one of the coolest things you can experience with plants is the thermal reaction that they create in the winter to melt the snow so that they can flower.

Veratrum viride, a “Tall drink of water” (pun intended), is a very sexy plant in the lily family. Its common name, “False Green Hellebore” has nothing to do with Hellebores which are in the “Buttercup Family”. Veratrum viride can get up over 6 feet tall in a moist, swampy or mucky area and have a nice spray of small green flowers.  

All of the plants mentioned in this story are great plants to use if you are building a bog garden or for the margins of your ponds. There are lots more native WV plants that like it wet, we’ll chat about those another time.

Peace Out, Glickster

Barry Glick, a transplanted Philadelphian, has been residing in Greenbrier County, WV, since 1972. His mountaintop garden and nursery is a Mecca for gardeners from virtually every country in the world. He writes and lectures extensively about native plants and Hellebores, his two main specialties, and welcomes visitors with advance notice. He can be reached at: barry@sunfarm.com - www.sunfarm.com or 304.497.2208