This photoset is from a blowout trip through half a dozen natural areas in Warren and Sussex County, NJ.  My intent was to survey some familiar Spiranthes populations to see if any of them were consistent with the newly described Spiranthes arcisepala.  Two populations were, which technically makes orchid number forty-four for me.  I also saw S. cernua and S. ochroleuca, and in a remarkable discovery in dry woods, Spiranthes ovalis!  This is the first record of this species in the state of New Jersey; previously, the closest it was known was halfway across Pennsylvania, and its the forty-fifth orchid I've found in New Jersey.  At nearly seventy plants, this wasn't a tiny population, and this discovery begs the question whether this species has been overlooked elsewhere since it is very small and flowers when almost nothing else in dry woods do.  In addition, there were Corallorhiza odontorhiza and Goodyera pubescens to round out a trememndous day of orchid hunting.

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