Ladies-tresses

Whenever the weather is agreeable, my reward for dumping the recyclables and the genuine trash—always, I'm happy to say, more of the former than the latter—at the town transfer station is to drive down the road to the Lantern Hill trail head and go for a "mountain" hike. This time, my route was blocked by four pretty unruly and untrustworthy dogs, so I decided to go elsewhere. There's a fine meadow nearby, and from the road, I could see that it was packed with wildflowers. I hadn't gotten much past documenting the usual cast of characters, from Queen Anne's Lace to Sneezeweed, when I noticed something unusual, a dry-ground orchid belonging to the Ladies'-tresses clan. When I photographed this clump, I didn't realize how tricky these corkscrew helices of minute blossoms would be to identify, but I think these belong in the Spiranthes vernalis basket, the strangely named Grass-leaved Ladies'-tresses—strange because these bloom in mid-summer rather than in vernal (spring) times. To be certain of the ID, I'll just have to make a return visit soon. Tough duty, but someone will happily do it.