Green in Winter: Downy Rattlesnake Plantain

Goodyera pubescens: The basal rosette of this attractive orchid is a good thing to look for on winter hikes. It grows in a variety of forest types, but is especially at home on a sandy substrate among rotting oak leaves. One unusual place to find it is in conifer plantations that are so thick that very little light reaches the forest floor. This, along with the allelopathic effect of a thick bed of rotting needles, ensures that very few herbaceous plants are able to live there. White flowers open in early to mid summer in northern Indiana. Dried and empty seed capsules remain into the following year.

Outwitting the Wily Orchids

Dan, Dan, the orchid man McDowell, my mentor for all things botanical, is fond of saying, "Peter, the neat thing about orchids is they can hide, but they can't run." But knowing this to be true is not always helpful in finding the less showy members of the orchid family.

There are three woodland species of orchids here in Indiana that can neither hide, nor run, during the winter months. The green over-wintering leaves are easy to spot among the decaying leaf litter on the forest floor. Find those leaves now before the green-up, mark their location with a GPS and return later when they are in bloom, and likely to be hidden by closely growing associates.

(1) Aplectrum hyemale
Common name: puttyroot, Adam-and-Eve orchid

(2) Tipularia discolor
Common name: crane-fly orchid

(3) Goodyera pubescens
Common name: downy rattlesnake plantain

Aplectrum hyemale sends up a single leaf in late September which is usually shed when the flower stalk is present in May. It is common to find an abundance of leaves at a winter location only to find a few flowering stalks when you return in the spring.




This is the rarer greenish form of Aplectrum hyemale forma pallidum which grows at a site in LaPorte County.


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Tipularia discolor, like the puttyroot, Aplectrum hyemale, produces a single leaf in September which is absent during flowering. I recently counted 22 leaves of this species at a LaPorte County site in April, but found only one flowering stalk when I returned in August.


Note the purple underside of the leaf of Tipularia discolor.



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Unlike the preceding two species, the strikingly patterned foliage of Goodyera pubescens can be found throughout the year, and is present during flowering in July and August.

Interesting Little Forest

Does this young forest look mundane? Uninteresting?

It’s quite the opposite!

At a fraction of an acre, it occupies a little corner in a long-abandoned ag field in St. Joe County, Indiana – out of cultivation for at least 30 years. Most of the surrounding land is yellow clay at the surface, and forests in the vicinity are Beech-Sugar Maple. But this little corner is dominated by Red Maple, with occasional Black Cherry and Sassafras on a sandy substrate. Unlike other Red Maple forests, this one is not in a low lying flat, but upland. The sand is almost certainly underlain with clay, keeping moisture at the surface for long periods of time.

When Red Maple forests aren’t too shady the herbaceous vegetation can be pretty exciting, especially if you like ferns, club mosses, and sedges. I first botanized this site in 1997 and found hundreds of Daisyleaf Grape Ferns (Botrychium matricariaefolium).

In 2008 I was startled to find Downy Rattlesnake Plantain (Goodyera pubescens) and Spotted Wintergreen (Chimaphila maculata).

Downy Rattlesnake Plantain Orchid (Goodyera pubescens)

Spotted Wintergreen (Chimaphila maculata)

Last week I went there to photograph Botrychium dissectum and its segregates and was fortunate to see a tiny Spiranthes orchid in seed. Its identification is guesswork, but diminutive Spiranthes ovalis is a possibility.


On the same visit I saw the lovely Shining Club Moss (Lycopodium lucidulum)!
Interestingly, the club moss was growing right at the base of a tree where water gets funneled when it rains. If you’ve never observed this, it’s worth donning a rain suit and going into the forest while it’s raining. All of the water that doesn’t drip from a tree’s limbs or get absorbed by the bark gets funneled right down the trunk, and even during moderate rain, water comes gushing down. Some plants take advantage of this. For example, Spinulose Wood Fern (Dryopteris spinulosa) will grow anywhere in mesic and wet forests, but in dryer sites it survives at the base of tree trunks. Watch for this – it’s a common sight, at least in northern Indiana. Dryopteris intermedia does this too, as shown in this photo from Warren Woods in Michigan. We should keep this in mind when doing native landscaping. And we should never pass up a chance to botanize a Red Maple forest!

Florist's Fern (Dryopteris intermedia)