All,

Since my brother Lou is home from Ecuador this week, we planned a trip up to the midwestern northwoods, sorry, there was not much time for big tree hunting. We went on a three day photographic orchid hunting expedition. We started on Monday afternoon at the Kissick Alkaline Bog Lake State Natural Area http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/land/er/sna/sna191.htm  just 2.5 miles west of Hayward, WI. It's species list includes 14 orchids, but only three were in bloom at the time of our visit. There we saw Pink Ladyslippers, Cypripedium acaule, with mostly scattered individuals or pairs:

Early coralroot, Corallorhia trifida:

Dragon's-Mouth, Arethusa bulbosa, with mostly scattered individuals right at the bog's lake edge :

On the way back, we stopped at board walk in the virgin part of the Uhrenholdt Memorial State Forest http://www.stateparks.com/uhrenholdt_memorial.html just northeast of Hayward. There were large groups of pink ladyslippers there, but it was near sunset, too dark for natural light photography :

We visited the hiking trail through the Drummond Woods old growth strip of woods along U.S. highway 63 (a Forrest Stearns discovery 60 years ago and documented in the journal of Ecology) less than two miles north of Drummond on US 63 on the northwest side of the road, but there was nothing notable there other than singing frogs in the twilight. The big stump of a large old white pine that was struck by lightning and cut down during the last 20 years was a big letdown, as was a topped very large diameter basswood. The remaining old growth was nice but not huge, and the intense mosquitoes kept me moving along during the twilight hike. 

We spent the night in Hurley and then visited my land near Mellen, WI the next morning. A large round-leafed orchid, Platanthera orbiculata, remains directly behind my neighbor's outhouse, but wasn't flowering. On the lake's bog, there were more plentiful, denser groupings of Arethusa blooming and about to bloom:

Nonflowering pitcher-plants, and sundews and many more examples of pink ladyslippers on the bog, in the swamp off the end of our access road, and in the older hemlock-pines in the southeast corner of my land (note the ~100" hemlock in the background) :

We had lunch at Angelo's Pizza in Ironwood, MI and then visited the interpretive nature trail at the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park and saw several more pink ladyslippers and a small patch of Goodyera before exploring some other perimeter areas of the park before retiring for the night. 

Lou asked to see a river mouth gorge with a bluff over Lake Superior. So, in the morning, we stopped at the end of Wisconsin highway 122 at the Michigan side of the Superior Falls on the Montreal River http://hunts-upguide.com/ironwood_superior_falls.html  at it's mouth with Lake Superior on the Wisconsin-Michigan state line. There, we were surprised to see yellow ladyslippers above us on the steep slope along the hydroelectric plant's service road/trail to the lakeshore below the parking lot:

On the way home, we stopped at the Beulah Bog http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/land/er/sna/sna122.htm northwest of East Troy on the west side of Lake Beulah in southeastern Wisconsin. There, we saw flowering northern pitcher-plants, Sarracenia purpurea:

and more sundews:

We had fun... we wish that we could have shared the experience with more of you!! Wood and deer ticks were extremely abundant, while the deer flies and mosquitos weren't too bad. I have a trip report from an overnight backpacking trip to the Porkies from a couple of weeks ago to send to the list, I just haven't finished it off yet. 

Paul Jost