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.
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 :)
ReplyDeleteI know a lot of plants, but I fail at Australian orchid ID!
ReplyDeleteYes, I understand that it may be a bit hit and miss - thanks for sharing it with us.
ReplyDeleteWe had 13 acres of bush on the market garden at Baxter and I loved the orchids.......there were heaps.
ReplyDeleteThat 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.
ReplyDeleteNeither did I Marcie - which is why I thought an Autumn flowering one was worthy of a post.
ReplyDeleteI'm always amazed by the sheer variety of orchids - endless combinations of size, color, and shape. How exciting to find them in the wild!
ReplyDelete