Moisture-Loving Natives Some Like It Wet

By Barry Glick

Hold on a second: It’s August, not April, isn’t it? And except for a week or so, it has rained every day up here on this mountain. It’s easy to complain, but why bother? You can’t do anything about it, so let’s roll with the punches.

Accepting the Yin/Yang of life and gardening, I’m okay with that and so are “most” of the plants that I am addicted to. That’s one of the wonderful miracles of the plant world: There are plants for every location and every situation.

Here are a few of our native plant friends that enjoy it a bit on the moister side or, as we say in plant world, they “like wet feet.”

Let’s start with Orchids. And no, these orchids don’t need an ice cube or shot glass to show you how to water them. You know, it still surprises me how taken aback most folks are to find out that right here on the East Coast, we have more than 20 species of naturally occurring, native orchids. Now you have to remove the image from your consciousness of the typical big prom corsage blooms, which are usually in the genus

Cattleya. Plants are classified into families, mostly based on their floral structure and sexual parts. If you pull out your 10X hand lens (an inexpensive tool that is a requirement on all woodland hikes and explorations), you’ll notice that the floral structure of our native orchids is identical to those prom corsage flowers—just in miniature.

Many of our native orchids favor, getting their feet wet—some, but not all. It’s like the subtitle of this article—a reference to the classic 1959 hit movie directed by Billy Wilder, starring Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, and Marilyn Monroe, “Some Like It Hot.”

One of the showiest of our native orchids is Platanthera grandiflora, actually, I could say that the name says it all—grandiflora! Commonly known as the Greater Purple Fringed Bog-Orchid, the flower is quite grand, a real eye-catcher, from the lavender color to the lovely fringing on the edges of this long-lasting bloom.

Another of my favorite moisture-loving plants is the genus Spiranthes. On this side of the U.S., we have five to seven species in the genus Spiranthes. Now, here is another “the name says it all” plant. If you look closely at the image at left, you’ll notice that the individual florets spiral around the flower stem. Not only that, but on this particular species, Spiranthes cernua f. odorata, the individual florets are “nodding,” hence the word cernua in the name, which means nodding in botanical nomenclature. Are you following along? The f. is a reference to the word “form, because this particular form of the species is fragrant. I can attest to the fact that it smells like vanilla extract—delightful!

How about a far differently scented flower? Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) is a real swamp lover and it sure does make a stink! The best place to see it around here, and it is quite common if you’re out looking for it, is around the boardwalk in the “Cranberry Glades” in the Monongohela National Forest in WV. They can be quite imposing if they are in the wet constantly. I’ve see specimens the size of a Subaru up there. And one of the coolest things you can experience with this plant is the thermal reaction that it creates in the winter to melt the snow around it so it can flower.

Another large plant is Veratrum viride, a real “tall drink of water” (pun intended). It is a very sexy plant in the Lily family. Its common name, False Green Hellebore, has nothing to do with Hellebores, which are in the Buttercup family. Veratrum viride can get up to over 6 feet tall in a moist, swampy, or mucky area and have a nice spray of small green flowers.

All of the plants mentioned here are great to use if you are building a bog garden or for the margins of your ponds. There are lots more Mid-Atlantic native plants that like it wet, we’ll chat about those another time. o

Barry Glick, a transplanted Philadelphian, has been residing in Greenbrier County, WV, since 1972. His mountaintop garden and nursery is a mecca for gardeners from virtually every country in the world. He writes and lectures extensively about native plants and Hellebores, his two main specialties, and welcomes visitors with advance notice. He can be reached at barry@sunfarm.com, www. sunfarm.com, or 304.497.2208.