Bear and I found a new denizen of the block during our daily perambulation, and if you're wondering how I have totally failed to discover it in the past, I should perhaps point out that it is smaller than my smallest fingernail and so far I have only found a very small patch of them.Most of the little native orchids only bloom for a few weeks anyway so it's been rather hit-and-miss in terms of finding them.
I have no idea as to its formal identity but the dawg thinks it could be a Bear's Orchid.
EDIT TO ADD: After consultation with the rather poor line drawings in "Common Orchids of the Castlemaine District", followed by a Google Images search, I am now reasonably [ well a little bit ] confident that what I have are the 'fairly common' Parson's Bands eriochilus cucullatus ... it even says that they flower through to April.
7 comments:
I'm trying to wrap my head around the idea of an orchid that small! How cool! I think "Bear's Orchid" is quite a fitting name :)
I know a lot of plants, but I fail at Australian orchid ID!
Yes, I understand that it may be a bit hit and miss - thanks for sharing it with us.
We had 13 acres of bush on the market garden at Baxter and I loved the orchids.......there were heaps.
That looks a bit like either a goats head or a yellow spider orchid. Not quite as colorful as a normal spider orchid. Check here, it looks a bit like the green comb spider orchid.
http://orchids.rnr.id.au/Caladenia3/index.html
Do you have bracken? we did and they would flower freely amongst the bracken...it was one of my favorite things as a child to find different ones of these.
Oh for google then. Maybe I would not have been out looking.....I think I got library books.
What a find! I didn't know there were any orchids flowering at this time of the year.
Neither did I Marcie - which is why I thought an Autumn flowering one was worthy of a post.
I'm always amazed by the sheer variety of orchids - endless combinations of size, color, and shape. How exciting to find them in the wild!
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