by Rich Leighton | Aug 4, 2019 | Florida Nature Facts, Florida Nature Photography, Natural History, Nature & Wildlife, Orchids
Our native orchids have a symbiotic relationship with certain fungi called a mycorrhizal association. The fungus provides nutrients to the orchid plant, and the orchid is a home to the fungus. Orchid seeds are so tiny they do not have enough food to nourish a...
by Rich Leighton | Apr 4, 2019 | Florida Nature Facts, Florida Nature Photography, Natural History, Nature & Wildlife, Orchids
To say that the number of wild native orchids found around the world is massive would be a massive understatement. Approximately 28,000 orchid species are found alive today which more or less equals the number of bony fish species found in the waters all over the...
by Rich Leighton | Mar 30, 2018 | Florida Nature Facts, Florida Nature Photography, Natural History, Orchids
Probably the most famous of our southern native orchids, the rare, leafless and mysterious ghost orchid of South Florida, Cuba and the Bahamas is at home in the dark, humid swamps where it regularly skips a few to up to a dozen or more years between flowering. It is...
by Rich Leighton | Mar 12, 2017 | Florida, Florida Nature Photography, Natural History, Nature & Wildlife, Nature Photography, Orchids
Ten years ago I spotted my first wild ghost orchid in the Fakahatchee Strand of Southwest Florida after literally years of exhaustively searching the wetlands and wading through enormous tracts of swamp following a grid pattern on a worn-out, folded-up survey map....
by Rich Leighton | Oct 22, 2012 | Florida Nature Photography, Nature & Wildlife, Nature Photography, Orchids, Photography, Wildflowers
Welcome to the first part of my new series, “Profiles in Nature”. Over the years I’ve amassed a great deal of information about natural history as a result of a lot of reading and being a natural outdoorsman. I grew up fascinated with the plants and...
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