At first I thought "not," --- based on the Connecticut Botanical presentation/description of Epipactis helleborine at up to 3 feet in height and having lavender tint flowers of ¾-inch across. http://ct-botanical-society.org/galleries/epipactishell.html But after reading your response I did additional research that seems to confirm this to be Epipactis helleborine. Thank you.
I was unable to get back to look for blooms on those plants yesterday but did manage to get to the woods this morning -- anxious to see those blooms! Each and every one of them was withered and had only brown stringy remnants where there should be blooms. What a disappointment!
Sounds like someone had sprayed them with herbicides, or maybe a grass fire (did the pine needles look burnt?). There's no way they'd have gone from still in bud, to finished, in just 2 days. Orchids are generally very sensitive to herbicides and only survive in areas with no herbicide input.
No spray or interference. They are in my woods and very remote and hard to access. I'll be going back down there to set up a trail camera, (trying to get some bear pictures), while there I'll snap a few pictures.
Michael, I looked around for a considerable time and only located about 11 of these plants and it appears that all of them are affected with some malady. No other plants in the area show any signs of this affliction. I'll try to post pics demonstrating what I observed: The first 4 show varying degrees of wilt-rot or whatever. Note that some have signs of problems on the leaves also. The 5th photo shows other plants in the same immediate area --- to the right-side/middle of that frame is another of the "affected" plants.
Does this look like it could be aphids? In searching, I have seen mentioned on another site of susceptibility to aphids. http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/1382/
The third and fourth pics, it looks like there might be fungal spores appearing on the top of the stem, so perhaps a fungal disease of some sort.
How sad to see them all affected. Michael is quite right, in that normally the flowers couldn't open and die in 2 days. Normally they start to open at the bottom and work their way up. Think you can rule out aphids, your pictures are so clear, you would see them when you zoom in. So it must be down to fungal /viral. They look so sick they probably won't reappear next year.
Thank you. I would very much have liked to see these cycle through full bloom, but I guess it is not to be.
