For those more familiar with frilly pink and purple supermarket orchids, the idea that relatives of these delicate creatures can be found growing in the wilds of temperate North America is a stretch. It seems stranger still that some hang on in the wild corners of New York City, rare, always besieged, but still present.
No one will ever be certain how many species of orchids greeted the first Westerners arriving in the lands we now call the five boroughs. But to the best of my ability to find them, nine native and one introduced species of orchid have survived to see the dawn of 21st century in New York City.
Orchid phenology is famously peculiar, and documenting the presence of these plants can be very challenging. A number of native orchid species produce leaves only during the winter months; others never produce leaves, or possess little or no chlorophyll. But of the orchids still found within the city limits only Goodyera pubescens, the downy rattlesnake plantain, stays green throughout the year. It is a strikingly handsome plant that waits out the cold by pressing its leaves as close to the ground as possible, hiding under autumn’s leaf litter and winter’s snow. This is a great strategy for an evergreen plant, as it protects fresh green leaves from hungry woodland herbivores, like deer, as well as winter freezes. When the first warm days of spring arrive, the winter-worn leaves stiffen upright and cast off the weight of autumn’s detritus.
Unlike most of its orchid relatives, rattlesnake plantain is almost always appreciated for its exquisitely patterned leaves as opposed to its flowers. Velvety and deep blue-green, each leaf sports a white central stripe that branches out into a netlike pattern of veins. The markings reminded early naturalists of snakeskin, which is the most plausible source for this orchid’s arresting name. Yet another tale makes reference to the plant’s beautiful but often overlooked green and white flowers; though each measures less than a quarter-inch wide, they are quite showy, packed together tightly on the upper third of the plant’s flowering stem. When the plant is in full bloom, the crowded flowers suggest a rattlesnake’s rattle.
The rattlesnake plantain might have been better served without the foliar fireworks. The popular 17th-century Doctrine of Signatures, which held that the Creator had bestowed plants with clues to guide humans to their proper medical benefits, meant that many of these orchids were collected and boiled as a treatment for snakebite. Sadly, rattlesnake plantain demonstrates no such curative properties, and the cooked orchids helped neither the victims nor the plants.
Even considering this sad harvest, it is the disappearance of suitable habitat through development, competition from nonnative plants and, most recently, the proliferation of urban deer, that have so reduced this beautiful orchid’s numbers. Goodyera is now one of New York City’s most imperiled plants. Though I know of only two extant populations within city limits — there are just a handful of plants in each — the local white tailed deer population has probably found others.