Calypso Orchid

Happy Mug Monday everyone 🥳!!! Coming to the stage late this week we have… CALYPSO ORCHID! That’s right, for the first time on Mug Monday we’re featuring... a plant 🌱!! This diva may be sessile (i.e., they literally cannot move), but BOY HOWDY is the house coming down, boots. Coming from the extravagant, diverse, yet highly threatened biological family Orchidaceae, also known as the Orchids, Calypso Orchids only require a very small space on the stage to completely take your breath away.

You’d be hard-pressed to find this diva in a wide-open space as they have a strict preference (or “niche”) for sheltered northern/montane forest floors. In fact, this is where they get their legendary title “Calypso”, which in Greek translates to “concealed” and refers to one of the nymphs in Homer’s Odyssey.

Coming in at only about 8-20 centimeters in height, Calypso Orchids feature an absolutely STUNNING display of pink/purple coloration with a very tasteful addition of yellow blush and a PERFECT adornment of red stripe contouring. Additionally, this diva strongly represents both parties of the sexual spectrum; a feature known as monoecy, which is common in seed plants (10% of all seed plants are monoecious).

Calypso Orchids can pose to be a rare sighting, but here in the Pacific Northwest we are lucky to have them in our well-covered montane forests. I personally have been able to spot one nearby Catherine Creek in the Columbia River Gorge! These breath-taking orchids are listed as threatened species within the states of Michigan, Vermont, and Wisconsin and endangered in New York and New Hampshire. If you’re lucky enough to spot one while you’re out on a hike, be sure to admire its beauty from a distance. While you ALWAYS need consent to touch a performer, these divas especially are extremely sensitive to disturbance and require specific soil fungi to thrive so be sure not to touch them.