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Illustration by April Dela Noche Milne
For decades I’ve been nurturing a native orchid in the woods behind my house. I point it out with proprietary pride to visitors. I’ve always thought of orchids as special and exotic, even though I know Canada has its fair share (not only in supermarket plant departments). And Canadian orchids are special. They may not be in the same category as Lepanthes miraculum from the cloud forests of Machu Picchu or the White Egret Orchid of the wetlands of Japan, but spectacular colonies of voluptuous Lady’s Slippers in deep woods and bogs all across Canada can hold their own.
My wild orchid isn’t showy. It rarely tops more than a foot, with glossy leaves spiralling around a slender stem topped by a spire of pale lime and pink flowers. My father showed me it checked off in his 1916 wildflower guide as Habenaria clavellata, the small green wood orchid. I assumed it had always grown in Ontario.
It’s a late bloomer, often not appearing until well into July, when I’ve almost despaired of it. Lately, I get anxious that this is the year it’s not going show up at all. The weather has finally become too hot, too dry. And then, to my relief and delight, there it is – maybe not quite in the same place I remember it, but nearby.
In a good year, a dozen or so may pop up. They have a particular fondness for the middle of paths and I have to set up detours so they don’t get stepped on. I’ve tried digging them out and moving them, but they don’t like it. They have deep roots and resent leaving any behind.
In addition to my backyard by the St. Lawrence River, I’ve seen them in dense Ontario woods north of the Trans-Canada Highway.
I’ve also found them growing more formally in a shady garden bed near City Park in Kingston, Ont. Those plants are six inches taller than mine: clearly someone has been watering and fertilizing them.
Recently, to my shock, I’ve learned that my orchid is not Habenaria clavellata at all. My orchid is not native to my backyard: it’s an introduced species, Epipactis helleborine, the Helleborine orchid. It grows across a huge swath of the world, from Portugal to Africa to China. On this continent, it was first recorded in upstate New York in 1879 by female members of the Syracuse Botanical Club (botany being one of the few studies where women could make a mark at the time). By the 1890s, it had shown up near Toronto. How did it get across the border so fast, I wonder? Did it travel by bird? Lake steamer? Or was it actually here earlier and no one noticed, perhaps mistaking it for the small green wood orchid?
Not only is this little orchid not native to North America but, horror of horrors, it’s been called out as an invasive species. That’s officially the case in Wisconsin, where it crops up unwelcomed on lawns and golf courses (themselves both invasive, I might point out).
Some people insultingly refer to it as the “weed orchid.”
Epipactis helleborine does have a certified Canadian cousin, I’ve discovered: Epipactis gigantean, a much larger terrestrial orchid that grows on the Pacific Coast from British Columbia all the way south to Mexico. Unlike helleborine, giganteanis is identified in current wildflower guides as a native plant. Having been stung once, I’m suspicious of that claim. Its global range may in fact, like helleborine’s, extend to Asia (India, Japan and China). So was Gigantean really always here, or is it only historically native – that is, here when settlers happened to observe and record it?
My wild orchid’s abrupt transformation from being at risk (in my mind) to invasive is difficult to accept. I strongly resist putting it in the category of herbaceous terrorists such as the bullying dandelion, the pestilential garlic mustard, the treacherous purple loosestrife, the murderous hogweed and the take-no-prisoners knotweed. Or that Cruella de Vil of invasive species, the dog-strangling vine.
I don’t hear anyone raising a hue and cry about other incomers such as orange day lilies, bouncing Bet, lily of the valley, or periwinkle. Or clover. Or all those other imported species essential to our survival: wheat, tomatoes, potatoes, cabbage, carrots. Perhaps those don’t qualify as invasives since they can’t survive in Canada’s (present) climate without human nurturing.
Still, they are everywhere.
So what am I to do with my orchid now? Get rid of it? Weed it out? It could be useful. No one in Wisconsin seems to have bothered to look into that. In some parts of the world, it is said to have antiviral and antifungal properties. In Nepal, it has traditionally been used to treat gout.
And surely if it wanted to crowd out all our certified genuine native species, it would have done so by now. Instead, it has quietly fitted in and got on with it.
Maureen Garvie lives in Kingston, Ont.
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