Sarasota Herald Tribune (FL) Posted o May 18, 2004

Book tells of rare beauties in swamp
Susan L Rife

Nature photographer Connie Bransilver grew up in the New Mexico desert, but she fell in love, unexpectedly, with the Florida rainforest and the animals and orchids that inhabit it.

"It was enchanting to me," said Bransilver, whose new fine-art photography book, "Wild Love Affair: Essence of Florida's Native Orchids" (Westcliffe Publishers, $40) has just been published. Bransilver lives in Naples and spends part of her photography time chest-deep in the tannic-acid tinged waters of the Fakahatchee Strand, looking for the rare and endangered wild orchids of Florida. She finds them, too -- ghost orchids, dwarf butterfly orchids, tiny frosted flowers.

Her new book documents these rare and delicate beauties and also the threats to their survival from overdevelopment and poaching. She'll make a multimedia presentation to the International Orchid Conservation Congress meeting this week at the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens.

"The book is about the love of these orchids," said Bransilver from her studio in Naples.

She had been primarily interested in photographing the wildlife -- what she calls "critters" -- of the Florida swamps when she discovered the orchids.

"I got fascinated with the whole concept of the mystery of these beautiful forest-dwelling plants," she said. "There's so little known about them.

"The first time I really saw and appreciated the power of these orchids to pull you in was when I saw a huge cigar orchid in bloom and it was against the gray tree trunks of the rather bare February cypress swamp," she said. "It was a huge plant, maybe 5 or 6 feet across, and each flower is only 1/2 inch to an inch long. I was just absolutely intoxicated with its beauty, and I became more and more interested in it as I found out how complicated it is."

Cigar orchids, also called bee-swarm orchids, are pollinated through pseudocopulation by bees, which think the blooms are other bees. Their survival is threatened by the shortage of the specific kind of bee that performs that function, Bransilver said. The species of orchid now is hand-pollinated by orchid specialists trying to save it in the wild.
And although human encroachment on the orchids' habitat threatens their survival, Bransilver said another threat is our poor understanding and manipulation of the water in the Florida swamps.

"We're monkeying with that all the time," she said. "People drain the swamps and it's too dry, or they flood the areas and will literally drown them. So (we need to establish) a natural hydro period -- and do we know what that is?"
Still, Bransilver is optimistic about the future of wild orchids in Florida.

"There's a lot of work going on with the mycorrhizal fungi -- if we can identify the fungi, then we can grow them, you can buy them for $25 or $30, which removes the need to poach, and the other hand, they can put back (specimens) in the swamp," she said.

INTERESTED?

Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, 811 S. Palm Ave. Sarasota, hosts the International Orchid Conservation Congress through Saturday. Workshops are open to orchid enthusiasts for $95 per day. Access www.selby.org/iocc or call 366-5731, Ext. 221.

Connie Bransilver is the author of "Wild Love Affair."