lithostrotionella's Favorites

At some point I wandered off and returned to the sheet to find everyone ooing and ahhing over these weird... things, stuck to a moth's eyeballs. After wondering if they were entomophagic fungi or something, we settled on pollinia of some kind. I knew about milkweed pollinia, but these didn't look quite right for milkweed, so what else makes pollinia? Orchids, apparently. Assuming these are orchid pollinia, and given the orchids we saw in bloom in the area, I'm guessing these belong to Platanthera, possibly Platanthera dilatata ssp. leucostachys. Ironically, the moth is probably harder to ID. Certainly in Geometridae, but beyond that is a bit of a challenge. Damon or Cat may have gotten better pics, but even with that I wouldn't be able to ID it to species. Here's Cat's observation: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/124199296

Extremely rare endemic. Location obscured on purpose. Specific site known only to experts. See link for great story: https://baynature.org/article/ivory-billed-woodpecker-rare-wildflowers-now-unlikely-symbol-success-era-extinction/

Interesting population of stunted plants growing directly out of rocky volcanics at ~2,700 ft.
Morphologically distinct from populations lower down the mountain closer to the valley.
No fruit present to investigate if these might possibly be ssp. elegans (closest nearby population being on the high elevation volcanics near nearby Mount Saint Helena).