CHEERIO FOR THE LADY SLIPPER

Fellow bog-trotter and Scouting colleague Mike L. recently sent a hearty "cheerio" of thanks for our small contributions to "...another great Camp School in the ancient Adirondacks" last summer. In a day and age of email splerbs and abbreviated tweets, the fact that friend Mike had sent an real note card with sepia-toned sailboats on the front and actual handwritten sentiments on the inside was duly noted and greatly appreciated. Evan the "forever" stamp of Alan Shepard: First American in Space affixed to the upper right corner of the envelope lent a (ahem) "note" of importance to his efforts to say a personal thank you.

But it was his return address of "24 Lady Slipper Lane" on the back of the envelope that caught my eye. It reminded me that one of my reoccurring pleasures of working the Adirondack National Camp School each year is that I often get to see one of my favorite Eastern Woodlands wildflowers, the Pink Lady Slipper, in full flower.

"One true-born blossom, native to our skies.
We dare not claim as kin,
Nor frankly seek, for all that is in it lies.
The Indian's moccasin."
---Elaine Goodall, 1904

Cypripedium acale is the Pink Lady Slipper or Pink Moccasin Flower, a large and richly colored wild orchid of conspicuous beauty, greatly enhanced by the charm of its Adirondack surroundings. The first fresh sight of it is always something of a event for me; I always feel as if I had forgotten from last year just how bright and stately a flower it was. Frank Morris in his classic Our Wild Orchids describes this annual (if we are lucky) encounter this way:

"Perhaps you have just entered some shadowy grove of evergreens, and there suddenly you come on a little group of them near the base of an old hemlock, their drooping pink heads flushed with a stray sunbeam, or drowsing in the twilight. Amid such scenes no flower could "ever fade into the light of common day."

A little botany here, again from Frank Morris:

"The Pink Lady Slipper plant consists of a short underground stem, from which springs a pair of large oval leaves, and between them a tall stout naked stalk surmounted by the flower. The two leaves are thick and strongly ribbed, silvery underneath, shining dark green above and slightly sticky with short hairs; in the young plant they form a enclosing vase to protect the blossom, but later they relax and acquire a more spreading habit. The scape is course fibered and a little ungainly in appearance. The sepals and side petals of the flower are greenish brown in color and somewhat narrow.

"The "slipper" or pouch is very large, far the largest of the "Lady-slipper" family. This bulbous flower droops almost vertically from the point of attachment, and is cleft down the middle the full length of the upper side. In fashioning this little shoe the sides are curled up from the sole in the usual way, but where drawn over to meet above the instep their edges, instead of being welded together, are softly folded in, leaving two steep ridges that run from top to toe with a deep cleft between them. The color is a very delicate pink, overlaid with a network of rich rose-red veins."

The Pink Moccasin is different in its habitat from all the other wild orchids, even from the other lady slipper orchids; it likes plenty of elbow room, and instead of being massed in dense clumps prefers to spread loosely over wide areas. At Massawepie Scout Reservation, where BSA National Camp School is taught, it ranges through the hummocky understory of spruce and hemlock that surrounds the lakes and bogs. It is strongly acid-loving and can make its home on the shallow leached soils or almost anywhere those conditions are met. I have found it growing in the damp sphaggy boglands along the trails, on granite slopes, and on the sandy glacier-piles of the higher elevations.

It is partial to the shade of evergreens and if left undisturbed multiplies often into large colonies about the scattered hobble-bush and striped goosefoot maple of the underbrush; such colonies are usually transient and can be shaded out by the shrubs, at first a protection, later smother the Moccasins.

Pink lady's slippers will not grow in the home garden when dug out of their natural environment for transplanting. (All native orchids in New York are protected and should not be picked, harvested or transplanted.) The orchid will only grow in a soil that has a specialized rhizoctonia fungus present. Most home gardens will not have this fungus present and you cannot take enough soil from around the plant to give the orchid a viable growing environment.

Some people harvest the pink lady's slipper for use as a sedative, according to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. Other uses of the plant are as a cure for insomnia and nerve medicine, due to the sedative qualities. The pink lady's slipper orchid has hair on the leaves and stems. Some people have an allergic reaction when touching the stems or leaves. The symptoms of an allergic reaction include itchy skin and a poison-ivy type rash.

If you have the luck, as we have had, to visit the Adirondacks in an exceptional season, when the two ends of June meet together in a riot of summer splendor, you will enjoy a very rare sight: the blooming of the Lady Slipper is a sight not to be missed!

Ok, keepers of the sacred thread. PANTONE colors are NOT just associated with printing. PANTONE provides color matching for textile and other industries as well. The BSA uniform cloth and embroidery colors are as follows, along with the associated link to the PANTONE textile reference. Incidentally, you can order cloth swatches for those of you who are really serious about this stuff:

PANTONE 19-0511 TCX Grape Leaf (http://www.pantone.com/pages/pantone/colorfinder.aspx?c_id=4279)

PANTONE 15-1119 TCX Taos Taupe (http://www.pantone.com/pages/pantone/colorfinder.aspx?c_id=1646)

More Variations on a Theme

California camp patch collector Matthew Potthast responded to my recent post of camp patches with a particular design by sending a scan of four Camp Oneonta (CA) patches from the 1940s with the common theme of evergreen trees on the edge of a lake with a canoe and canoeist set in the middle foreground. This design for late 30s and 40s camp patches is usually sewn on white twill with one or two colors of embroidery but there are many variations. Potthast writes: "I've also seen a 1942 which is similar to these and a 30's era diamond patch. I believe I've seen similar designs on other camp patches of that era."

Oneonta, California, or Oneonta Beach, now part of Imperial, CA. If anyone has any more information on this now-apparently defunct camp, it would be appreciated.

Design Variations on a Theme

I found in a large batch of patches I acquired on eBay recently three camp patches with a similar design theme but each with a different style of manufacture. The first of these,Camp Strake Brave, (Sam Houston Csl,TX) is a green silkscreened felt patch with a line of evergreen trees along the shore of a lake with a canoe in the foreground. This is a common design among camp felts of the late 1930's and 40's, and very similar to a 1941 Camp Deerslayer felt from my own council camp on Otsego Lake at Cooperstown NY. The second of the trio, Camp Double Lake 1949, (also Sam Houston Csl,TX) is an unusual felted print on a suedelike canvas. This patch is interestingly stamped on the reverse with the maker's name H.KRAFT ASHLAND, N.Y. The third smaller (2 3/4" dia.) patch, CAMP ROCK ENON (VA), c. 1947-50, is a russet and dark green embroidered on white twill, gauze back. All three patches are illustrated on CampImages.com and exhibit the same general theme of a person paddling a canoe (the Camp Strake patch puts the paddler in the stern of the canoe but the other two illustrate the paddler sitting in the center) on a lake with a row of evergreen trees along the shoreline, mountains outlined behind and above the trees.
Anyone knowing of other patches with this design, I would appreciate an email/pic.

A cosmic mindbender moth in Central Park!

A cosmic mindbender moth in Central Park! Black Witch [female] The Black Witch, a tropical moth in the Noctuid family, is normally found in Florida, Texas and points south. Every so often individuals of this species, for unknown reason, migrate north, sometimes as far north as Newfoundland and once, Alaska. This particular Black Witch found its way to Central Park on Saturday, August 12. She [definitely she was a she; males don't have that white band] liked what she saw, or, more likely, liked what she drank at the sap tree, and returned the next night. Two nights in a row. You can be sure there will be a crowd at the sap tree tonight. Note: This moth is BIG! The Sun Herald -- Biloxi, Mississippi Sat, Jul. 16, 2005 Remember Mothra? It was huge... 15,000 tons of ticked off Lepidotpera. It leveled Tokyo, scared any little kid who saw it in a dark movie house and kicked Godzilla's tail until Big G fried it to a crisp with its bad breath, only to have Mothra's kids tie him down with their steel-hard strands of silk. Mothra was one bad dude, but even it didn't get to use the name mariposa de la muerte (moth of death). That particular sobriquet goes to the black witch moth. It's had that title since the time of the Aztecs. They believed that, if there was illness in a house and this moth entered, the sick person would die. Its biology had a lot to do with this superstition. Large numbers of black witches would appear in early November, just in time for the feast of the dead. Couple that with their attraction to the lights in a home and the moth's strong, bat-like flight, and you can see how easy it was to associate this creature with death. Superstitions about this moth can be found wherever it is known. In Jamaica (where it's known as the "duppy bat," "mourning moth" or "sorrow moth"), they share the same myth with the Mexicans concerning death. The Jamaicans also believe that the moth brings bad news to a home. In the Bahamas, it goes by the happier name of "money bat." It is said that, if the money bat lands on you, you will come into money. In south Texas, people say that, if a black witch lands above your door and stays there for a while, you will win the lottery (a more recent myth, one would think). People in Hawaii believe that the moth is the embodiment of the soul of the recently deceased. The black witch moth (ascalapha odorata) is one of the largest moths in the insect world and is the largest insect in the Western Hemisphere, with the males reaching a wingspan of 11 cm (5 inches) and the females 17 cm (7 inches). It belongs to the largest family of moths (Noctuidae) with just under 3,000 species in North America. Along with size, the female can be distinguished from the male by the presence of a pale median band (stripe) running through her wings. Now why would I dedicate this week's column to such a creature? Since late June, Dr. David Held with the extension service in Biloxi has received a number of calls from people about the black witch. Many of the callers have lived along the Coast their entire lives and had never seen one of these beautiful creatures before. I was called to someone's home on Thursday to identify a "huge butterfly." At first, I couldn't tell what it was. I wasn't able to capture the moth and it flew faster and straighter than any moth I'd ever encountered. Without a specimen to examine, a search of my library was fruitless. Then Held called me, saying that he had a live specimen of an unusual moth. When I got there, I immediately saw that it was the same insect that I'd seen earlier. It was the black witch. Last Saturday in the Sun Herald, there was a question in the Sound Off section regarding a large "black" moth. The final irony came with further research on the biology and ethology of A. odorata. I found a report of the black witch moth being brought to the U.S. in a hurricane. In 2003, hundreds of black witch moths were reported within the eye of Hurricane Claudette when it made landfall near Port O'Connor, Texas. No black witches had been seen in Texas prior to the hurricane's arrival. Immediately after the storm passed through, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the moths were reported along the central Texas Gulf Coast. Did they come across the Gulf in the storm? Perhaps Cindy brought them to us this year? What will Dennis bring? Of course, black witch moths are naturally migratory and are abundant throughout the New World tropics. They travel north, usually from Mexico, and have been spotted as far afield as Canada and Alaska. One report has the black witch being seen along the western coast of Africa. Only one official identification has ever been made of a black witch in Mississippi and it was only one of 11 reports (excluding Florida) of this moth east of the Mississippi River. Like most moths, they are nocturnal. A moth is just a night-flying butterfly, or, more appropriately since moths outnumber butterflies eight to one, butterflies are day-flying moths. Since they are active at night, it stands to reason that they rest during the day. Some of the most frequently chosen rest stops are in carports, garages, under eaves and on window screens. There are even cases where they've been found resting under moving vehicles. During the day, you can approach one quite easily. If you have a camera, you can get some pretty nice photos. Despite their evil reputation, black witch moths are harmless. They're a beautiful creature dressed in brown and black scales with violet or green hues. A close look will reveal magnificent patterns on the wings. They're usually around only for a day or two, so if you find one of these creatures visiting your home, don't think of it as a harbinger of death and doom. Think of it as a miracle of survival. Tim Lockley is a specialist in entomology (the study of insects) and is retired from a 30-year career as a research scientist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. To have him answer your individual questions, please send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to Tim Lockley, c/o The Sun Herald, P.O. Box 4567, Biloxi, MS 39535.

Of Toothworts, Spring Beauties, and Trout Lilies--
Flowers of a Woodland Spring.

Compared to most growing things, many woodland wildflowers appear in May with the suddenness of an explosion. Just a month earlier, the ground showed little color except for the drab-brown leaf litter. The pointed shoots of the trout lily give only a hint of what is to come. And then almost overnight, the forest floor is dotted with jewels of pale amethyst, citrine and diamond-white. These are the ephemerals, wildflowers that grow, flower, and die away before the tree canopy closes in and darkens the forest floor.

The Toothwort*, Dentaria concatenata, is an ephemeral with pale flowers. It has small blossoms of white or pale pink, and when it grows among Spring Beauties, Claytonia caroliniana, another fragile wildflower belonging to the Purslane famly, the two plants are hard to tell apart at first. The toothwort is taller and more upright, and below its cluster of flowers is a whorl of leaves divided into narrow sections with toothed edges. The toothwort is nourished by the food that was stored last year in a slender rhizome underground. Because the crisp little rhizome has a sharp, peppery taste , the plant is also called "pepperroot" and is prized by wild food enthusiasts.

The Trout Lily, or Yellow Adder's Tongue, Erythronium americanum, is another ephemeral that rises from a deep-seated corm, a swollen bulblike form on the base of the stem. The speckled-purplish outside, bright yellow inside, flowers (alluding to the pattern on a brook trout) are actually sepals. The tiny yellow true petals have dark spots near the heart of the flower. Truly a child of spring, the trout lily's mottled green leaves disappear entirely by mid-summer, replaced by others woodland treasures of far different patterns.

*The word "wort" means "plant," the "tooth" part alludes to the white, tooth-like growths on the roots.