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Prairie Orchid Revival
An Endangered Flower Gets an Unanticipated Boost
As tallgrass prairie habitat has nearly disappeared across the United States, so has one of its most striking residents: the western prairie fringed orchid. But the flower has unintentionally been granted a new lease on life. Researchers have found that a moth introduced by entomologists to control an invasive weed is now helping to pollinate and preserve this iconic, threatened flower.
First documented by Lewis and Clark, the western prairie fringed orchid is a slender, single-stemmed wildflower that can stretch up to 4 feet tall. In early summer, each stem is topped by as many as two dozen creamy white flowers, each lined in feather fringe and each bearing a long throat, or nectar spur.
As native prairies have been converted to cropland, the orchid has lost habitat, and the number of insects that pollinate the flower has dropped. With the loss of pollinators needed to aid reproduction, the flower has declined to less than half of its original numbers, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The Nature Conservancy and the Forest Service have teamed up with researchers from North Dakota State University (NDSU) to study the orchid’s chances for survival. The researchers have been monitoring orchids and trapping moths at Brown Ranch, a Con-
servancy preserve in North Dakota’s Sheyenne Delta. In 2003 they recorded the first evidence that spurge hawkmoths are now pollinating the orchid.
This discovery illustrates the importance of biodiversity, says NDSU entomologist Marion Harris. “Plants have greater chances of recruiting new pollinators if biodiversity remains high.”
Harris’s research team also documented the moth’s increased presence in the Sheyenne Delta. “We’ve been intensively sampling, and this year, we found incredible levels of the spurge hawkmoth,” says Harris. “This is great news for the orchid today.”
—Kathryn Brown
Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photo © Anton Benson/TNC (Prairie Fringed Orchid); © NDSU (Spurge Hawkmoth)
