"the Fakahatchee Strand... a wild orchid clinging to a branch. ... said state park guide John Elting. "That's a clamshell orchid blooming..."
rare ghost orchids and ribbon orchids. ... Wild orchids draw some of the visitors to the Fakahatchee Strand... The Fakahatchee Strand lies west of the Big Cypress National Preserve and Everglades National Park. A strand is a narrow slough, pronounced "sloo," where trees grow along a natural depression. Park rangers joke that the Fakahatchee is "the Grand Canyon of the Everglades," even though it's only a few feet deeper than the areas surrounding it. Beginning in World War II, the giant cypress of the Fakahatchee were logged for shipbuilding and construction. Millions of feet of timber were cut in the 1940s and '50s. Small railroad tracks carried logs out of the swamp. The ridges that supported those tracks still line the strand. ... The 90,000-acre swamp gained fame in "The Orchid Thief," a 1998 book by Susan Orlean. Her story of an... orchid poacher became a... 2003 movie under the name "Adaptation." Orlean described the Fakahatchee as "beautiful the way a Persian carpet is beautiful: thick, intricate, lush, almost monotonous in its richness." Elting loved the vivid storytelling and painstaking research of "The Orchid Thief," but said Orlean didn't care for being in the swamp. She didn't take the wading tour." URL : http://www2.tbo.com/content/2007/dec/27/me-swamp-tour-a-slip-back-in-time/ ********************************* Joyeuses Fetes / Happy Holiday Season ! VB _______________________________________________ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) [email protected] http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
