Rangers from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park recently caught a group of poachers who were stealing orchids from the North Carolina side of the park.

The park confiscated and replanted 2,300 Downy rattlesnake plantains, an orchid variety. A hiker stumbled across people picking the plants and alerted park rangers when they got back to the trailhead. The hiker was on a trail off Newfound Gap Road above the Oconoluftee area.

The plants had only been out of the soil for a day or so and the roots were not dried out, according to Keith Langdon, a park ranger involved in the replanting.

“They were all watered when we replanted them and the rain we are having now will help,” Langdon said.

Langdon said the park was not in the habit of pulling up and replanting these orchids, so they have no idea what the survival rate will be. However, Langdon thinks the survival rate will be positive. The transplants will be monitored to see what the survival rate is.

Downy rattlesnake plantains are a fairly common species but could be desired by florists and orchid growers. Picking and removing any plant from a national park is illegal.

The people caught stealing the plants were immigrants. In national forests, the picking of some plants for commercial purposes is legal with a harvesting permit. The Forest Service has seen a significant increase in immigrant populations seeking picking permits in recent years. The increased demand for picking ginseng and galax has created sustainability concerns and led the U.S. Forest Service to tighten restrictions on picking in terms of the time of year and the size of the plants that can be harvested.