Lucky day! Spring coralroot orchids are blooming for the first time in five years -- spike-like singles or clusters of yellowish, reddish, or purplish stems up to ten inches tall, arrayed with dainty white, magenta-spotted flowers. They can't make oxygen from carbon dioxide and water, for they lack chlorophyll, but they are saprophytic. They absorb organic matter below ground, aided by micotrophic fungi, a habit shared with the crested coralroot orchid that blooms here in May and June. Both saprophytes live in areas of deep leaf litter and rotting wood, where they obtain nourishment from decay via their fungus partners.

The spring coralroot's infrequent flowering is no cycle that I've discovered. Six of my nine records of first appearances are between February 12 and March 13, so I look closely at winter temperature and precipitation and find that flowering is associated chiefly with rains totaling at least six inches between New Year's Day and first bloom. That's exceptional rainfall, since the January-February average is five inches. I'll bet that soggy soil enhances fungal activity, which promotes the nutrition needed for reproduction.

Reproductive interdependency is a common message. Plants bloom or not, produce seeds or not, or propagate vegetatively depending on the weather. Barred owls may not breed in food-poor years, and butterflies are unsuccessful seasonally if plant foods are scarce. Eastern screech owls lay more or fewer eggs depending on more or less animal food which depends on plants which depend on rainfall and soil nutrients dependent on soil bacteria and fungi. Relations are complex, but if I look and listen carefully, I see and hear all life dancing together.