Wow, Rita, pretty and so cool to discover rare, native orchids on your land!

How interesting! If I'd passed it I would have thought it was just a slightly anemic coral bean bloom and kept walking.

I've got one that comes up every year by my ditch.

Wow—and in my county, too. Sacoila lanceolata.

These actually do have leaves. They just come up after blooming and are some of the largest leaves of any terrestrial orchid in Florida. Place a small flag by the plant when in bloom so you can avoid mowing the leaves when they are up.

Prem, I did read that somewhere, might have been on your website. It's just a stroke of luck that Hubby hasn't mowed up there yet. Yes I'm going to mark it somehow so that He will avoid it. Thanks.

Thanks for the heads up!

way cool... maybe put some cypress mulch n the area?

Since these native orchids seem to be extremely picky about conditions, I don't want to take the chance of changing their immediate environment with anything, I just need to put a stake or something there. The first one we found that Prem came to photograph seems to be very finicky. The last 2 years the leaves appeared and only 1 or 2 bloomed. Then there were some years that many of them bloomed. Since I'm not an expert I don't know why this happens, I just feel lucky when they do appear.