We lucky residents of the northeastern United States can claim some of the showiest of the North American orchid species as our own. My early years of orchid hunting were spent locating sites for these species. Now I enjoy revisiting and monitoring some of my favorite locales.

While visiting family in Toronto in late June I made a one day run 150 miles north to the orchid-rich Bruce Peninsula. 2014 was an unusually late year on the Bruce with the yellow and showy lady's-slippers blooming period overlapping. (Think hybrids!) The showy lady'slipper is one of my favorite orchids to photograph and out of the many populations that I have been lucky enough to observe, the premier site is on the Bruce, secreted away in an arborvitae (Thuga occidentalis) swamp. The unique thing about this population is that the orchids grow in very close ranks, forming a large clump of 200-300 individuals; this is the only place I have seen this phenomenon - in other locales the plants are more spread out. This was my fifth visit and I noticed that the arborvitae - as is its natural wont - is beginning to shade the orchids a bit and there were fewer plants. I am going to follow up with the conservation organization that manages the site and suggest some management strategies to them. I visited a second, roadside site for showies and on a whim decided to investigate the boggy forest further back, discovering a lot more plants in the process. This population has many individuals that are almost-white; I have yet to find the "Holy Grail": a pure white one.

The Bruce is perhaps most famous to native orchid enthusiasts for its millions of yellow lady's-slippers that carpet the roadsides like weeds - albeit very beautiful "weeds!" and I wasn't dissapointed on this visit. A lot of the 'yellows' were past, but I knew of a shady roadside - literally in someone's front yard in the town of Tobermory - where the orchids were still in decent bloom. I spoke to the landowner, who was performing some weed-removal perilously close to the orchids, mentioning that they are orchids and are quite rare in most places. He replied that "those are all over the place" but he wasn't planning on hurting them...

On our way west in early July we paid a visit to a site for Platanthera leucophaea (eastern prairie Fringed orchid) in Ohio. In the late 1990's an estimated 5,000 plants bloomed at this location; we found a paltry seven, all but one way past-prime. I didn't bother to set up my camera, instead opting for the convenience of the I Pod to document the sighting.

Eric Lamont and I have been monitoring two orchid sites in eastern Pennsylvania since 2008 and in late July we paid both of them a visit. The first is a well known and recently preserved (Hallelujah!) power line cut that is home to an amazing population of Platanthera blephariglottis (Northern White Fringed Orchid), Platanthera ciliaris (Yellow Fringed Orchid) and their hybrid, Platanthera x bicolor. This year was a banner year there, with hundreds of White Fringed orchids (the dominant species) blooming along with a healthy number of Yellow Fringed and many, many hybrids - each one a different color combination of the two parents. A truly amazing display!

In 2013 Eric and I visited the only known eastern Pennsylvania population of Platanthera peramoena (Purple Fringeless Orchid) located along the Susquehanna River near Millersburg, PA. To our great dismay and horror the site had been recently mowed and there were only seven depauperate plants. Feeling that the site was threatened with destruction, I contacted the PA Game Commission - who manages a preserve that abuts the site - and they contacted the landowner in a friendly way to ensure proper management of the population. This year we returned and were heartened to count 114 blooming orchids! Although not as robust as past specimens, they are doing very well and were not damaged too much by the aggressive late-season mowing. We are ultimately hop