Spectres of the swamp

Just in time for Halloween, Eclectic Epiphytes presents a post on swamp ghosts. The inspiration for this post is a fascinating and very well-written article by John Darnton, published in the October 2007 issue of the Smithsonian magazine. Read the full article here.

Papua New Guinea is a true lost world. Virtually unexplored even into the 21st century, its hot lowlands hum with lush jungle and its mountains are covered with moist cloud forest where birds of paradise flit between the shadows. Papua New Guinea is the kind of place that makes any orchid lover's heart beat that much faster. Certain areas are so remote that several new species of orchids can still be collected there on a single field trip. It has the largest concentration of unique species of Dendrobium orchid anywhere in the world, from minute gems that can only be appreciated through a magnifying glass, to reedy giants several metres tall. The people of Papua New Guinea speak over 800 different languages, making it the linguistically most diverse country in the world. Many still live in the tribal way, close to nature and the ancestors. Until recently, shells and dog teeth were legal currency. Until recently, the phrase having a friend for dinner had an entirely different meaning. And until recently, the Agaiambo swamp held a ghostly secret...

On the 23rd of February 1942, in the midst of World War II, an American Boeing B-17 on a bombing mission against the Japanese made a perfect emergency landing in the middle of an ocean of kunai grass swampland. Kunai grass (Imperata cylindrica) bears sharp needles of calcium oxalate crystal on the edges of every leaf blade and is unusual for being flammable even while green. Cut-up and delirious with malaria, the airmen finally arrived at Port Moresby after an arduous thirty-six day trek. However, the remarkable part of the story is not the journey of the airmen, but the plane they left behind in the swamp. Not only was it left behind, but it was remarkably well preserved, even after decades of lying in eight feet of water under boiling tropical skies. It was only rediscovered in 1972 during an RAAF helicopter exercise, thirty years after the crash. Macabre. Christened the Swamp Ghost, several explorers and historians have become so infatuated with the derelict that regular fly-overs and hiking expeditions to the site of the wreck have been organized. There's even a website dedicated to its legacy. One explorer's obsession with the Swamp Ghost finally got the better of him, however. By May of 2006 Alfred Hagen, an aviator from Bucks County Pennsylvania, had paid $100,000 for an export permit from New Guinea's National Museum and Art Gallery and salvaged the plane from its swampy grave of sixty years. Apparently, it would make a great display in some Aeronautical Museum...

There is one other ghost of the swamps that I'd like to share with you. In the Fakahatchee Strand Preserve in the Florida Everglades, hidden amongst the bald cypress trees, protected by alligators and CITES legislature, lives a ghost with three names. Sometimes known as Dendrophylax lindenii, sometimes as Polyrrhiza lindenii, or sometimes as Polyradicion lindenii, it is commonly referred to as the ghost orchid. This phantom flower is a rare apparition indeed. It is an epiphyte like most tropical orchids, preferring to grow on other plants rather than skulk about in the shadows. But what distinguishes it from our normal concept of what an orchid looks like is the fact that it does not have any leaves. Whatsoever. The plant consists solely of a network of green roots which have taken over the task of photosynthesis. Glistening white flowers, strangely frog-like in appearance, are produced in late summer to tempt the giant sphinx moth. This is the only insect with a proboscis of sufficient length to get to the bottom of the orchid's nectar-filled spur. This summer, a gigantic specimen of the orchid with a huge mass of tanlged roots was discovered 45 feet up a bald cypress tree in the Audubon Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary. The orchid is estimated to be about 50 years old. Ghost orchids often manage to produce three or more flowers during a summer flowering season. Since its accidental discovery on the 7th of July (by hikers searching for an owl, no less) this specific plant has produced a record 20 blossoms in two flushes of ten flowers lasting up to four weeks at a time. Such generous beauty makes the plant particulary vulnerable. The ghost orchid is in danger of disappearing altogether, like that WWII plane, due to the covetous intentions of over-zealous collectors. If you've read a book called The Orchid Thief, or seen a movie called Adaptation, then you'll know all about it. Many people have gone down the road to madness after meeting a ghost in the swamp...

Credit to NC Orchid for the beautiful photograph of Polyrrhiza lindenii. Visit his Flickr page for more amazing pictures.