Wah, What details. Yes, it is the same for so many of us. -- With regards, J. M. Garg
On Mon, 6 Jun, 2022, 1:40 am Ashutosh Sharma, <[email protected]> wrote: > It was the 3rd of July in 2017, when on a hot and humid day, I had > embarked on a journey to a place I had previously visited only once, in the > hope to find some orchids. > > Around that time, I was a first year student doing BSc. Hons. in Forestry, > who was on his semester break. Though I was a curious student, I had very > little to no knowledge about orchids and definitely no prior field > experience of finding orchids in the wild. Despite this, I had a newly > developed passion for finding orchids in their natural habitat, which would > be difficult to reason out why. So simply put, I was out there out of my > mere obsession to find an orchid. > > The only orchid I had seen before this encounter was that of the much > common Rhynchostylis retusa (a epiphytic orchid) that was brought to me by > my father, making me clueless about the habitat of a terrestrial orchid. > The little knowledge I had about orchids was based on the few online images > and videos of orchid hunting that I had watched. > > As I live in a broad valley in Kullu district of Himachal Pradesh, an area > that is surrounded by big mountains in every direction with small narrow > valleys in between having lush green temperate forests, I already had some > intuition of finding orchids in one such undisturbed serene forest. So, I > immediately dialled up a friend of mine asking him to spare some time of > his to accompany me and more importantly take me on his scooty to the place > which was about 15 Km from our village. In spite of having a busy schedule, > he managed to make it on time. At 11AM on that particular day, the two of > us started our journey in the hope to find a orchid we started getting > plenty of Balsams, Rananculus and many other species which were very new to > me those days. In a span of two hours, we stepped our feet on top of a hill > which was about 2400 metres in elevation. I was quite happy because I found > several plants new to me, but certainly was not satisfied because what I > was out on a hunt for was an Orchid!. Before I start exploring further deep > in the jungle, my friend got a call from his father asking him to come home > early, forcing me to blurt out the words "haan chalo chalte hain" (yeah > let's go back), with a heavy heart and an obvious fake smile. > We started our return journey and to save us some fuel, we lowered our > pace on the neutral scooty, enjoying the view. The next thing I know, my > eyes have struck hold of something unusual on the right side of the road > that took us downhill. I patted my friend, motioning him to stop the > scooty, but before he could bring the scooty to a halt, I had already taken > a leap off the vehicle, exclaiming "I finally found an Orchid". When I got > closer to the two plants growing together, I found them to be very strange > as not a single leaf was visibile to my eyes. All that I could see was a > dark yellowish-brown colored tall erect scape with several flower buds and > couple of mature flowers. After taking a few images using my simple android > phone (Gionee M5 lite), we started our return journey with my mind etched > on the orchid, thinking which orchid could it turn out to be. I had > literally no idea about which orchid it could be. Infact, I still don't > have any answer as to how I was able to confidently call it an Orchid (as I > didn't find any peculiar labellum/lip to conclude it like most epiphytic > orchids have and had almost no knowledge about orchids). As soon as i > reached home, the first thing I did was look up papers as I couldn't resist > my urge to get it's name. With me, I had a paper titled "An annotated > checklist of the Orchids of Western Himalaya, India" with several > photographs where I tried to check for possible matches, only to find that > there is no image matching with the one I had clicked. So the next thing I > did was to make some wild guesses, while scrolling through tens of pages > long paper having some two hundred thirty nine species names, making it > obvious that the probability of getting the correct match was absolutely > negligible. But to my (everybodys') surprise, my second guess Galeola > lindleyana took me a little closer to identifying the orchid's name. After > looking up its images, I was very much sure that it's in the Galeola genus > (a rare mycoheterotrophic orchid) which has only two known species from the > Western Himalaya. Only later did I get its species confirmed as Galeola > falconeri Hook.f. by our group orchid expert Dr. Pankaj sir... > > And after two years, in 2019, when I went back to the same place to see > this orchid again, I was surprised to see that the entire locality was > badly devastated in a road widening operation. In front of my eyes, I could > see a big JCB working bringing down trees, making me feel sad and helpless > at the same time. However there was some hope in me, telling me that some > of its individuals must be thriving in the nearby deep forest. And finaly, > only this last week (May 2022) after extensive field work in the same area, > I found five plants of this really very rare orchid species (yet to flower) > growing in much safer locality, very deep in the forest away from the > public eye. > > And now when I look back at those days, I wonder how and when this > obsession of finding Orchids out of mere curiosity turned into a > never-ending true love for Orchids. This better remain a mystery! > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "eFloraofIndia" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web, visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/indiantreepix/CADkfUKt2G_WCs8R-qpf1LiwwQH5DevTecb6hUtYihC3%3DDYFnSQ%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/indiantreepix/CADkfUKt2G_WCs8R-qpf1LiwwQH5DevTecb6hUtYihC3%3DDYFnSQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "eFloraofIndia" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/indiantreepix/CA%2BiuSFAh1JTMnQBaZAcjzfE%2Bt28xQ6mJzr_NBELt%3DyR9d7chog%40mail.gmail.com.
