Early morning walk with kangaroo and orchids

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Brunderee Lake, donkey orchids, greenhoods, wax lip orchid

Oh, I love getting up early and heading off for a walk. Today I amble towards Brunderee Lake, just a short distance from home. The sun’s just beginning to light up the world. As I enter the track I spot a kangaroo.  He stays with me for quite a distance, pausing every so often to have his photo taken. I oblige: snap snap snap. And each time he hops away when I’ve finished and waits till I catch up. I finally refrain from snapping, and he too loses interest and bounds off into the bush.

This leaves me free for the real business of the morning: orchid spotting. The rock lilies on the granite boulders beside the highway are flowering in lavish sprays and this suggests that I may find smaller native orchids beside the track where I’ve seen them in other years. And sure enough, there’s a small pale donkey orchid (Diuris sulphurea) lurking alone amongst the grass and kangaroo poo. So I pay due homage, flat on my belly with both cameras in operation.  A few steps further on there’s quite a colony, their colour more saturated.

I return to the track and continue towards the lake, which I can see sparking in the sun. Everything is very dry. We badly need rain. The palette of the bush is desiccated leaves, and the sound under foot crunchy. But that doesn’t deter wax lips (Glossodia major), one bright purple bloom flaunting itself by the track and another more demure, more pallid one hiding amongst the prickles of bell-shaped heath. 

By now my eyes are well attuned and I notice something else orchidaceous, which I take to be the bearded orchid my friend Rosemary spotted in just that place on her last visit. On close inspection it proves to be a tiny greenhood, possibly Pterostylis pedunculata.

When I have satisfied my urge to worship, I walk on down to the lake.

Acknowledgements to Jude channelling Becky, who has challenged bloggers to go square in September with flower photos.

In search of a good photo

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Dipodium roseum (or punctatum), Hyacinth orchids

The hyacinth orchid is a recalcitrant subject for a portrait, as I may have mentioned before. It has a mass of flowers on a tall stem, which woggles madly in the slightest breeze. And the the flowers have a deep trumpet that defies clarity. As if that doesn’t pose enough photographic problems, there’s the backlight, and the marauding wallabies who chew the top off just as the inflorescence is readying itself for splendour.

However, my weekend companion managed to get a few shots this morning, armed with knowledge about ISO, white balance and P. I am envious, but I lack his patience and technical instincts. The photos aren’t perfect (at least in his opinion), but they’re a darned sight better than anything I’ve taken.

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Cinnamon bells

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cinnamon bells, Gastrodia sesamoides, potato orchid

At the end of my graveyard walk, I amble along the flat on the outskirts of Nerrigundah, mildly disappointed. After all, I've heard a number of stories of old cemeteries hosting colonies of rare orchids. Not this morning. Not as far as I could see. Not without leaving the grassland and poking about, without a stick, in what might well be the territory of snakes.

My eyes have become accustomed to scanning the road edge. Sometimes I even think I've developed some sort of expertise. And there it is. An orchid, or something that looks enough like an orchid to draw me over for a closer look.

My eye has not let me down. There it is, Gastrodia sesamoides, last sighted in the sandy soil at Huskisson on Jervis Bay, holidaying with my sister-in-law. Aboriginal people used the tubers for food and found them by following the scratchings of bandicoots, hence the common name potato orchid. The flowers have a perfume I missed by focusing too much on photography, hence another common name, cinnamon bells. This is one of the orchids that self-pollinate and thrive when there have been summer fires. It is “widespread and common”, as are most of the orchids I see, but that doesn't diminish my pleasure in spotting it.

However there is a down side. I may begin to think every walking episode should end with orchids!

 

 

 

 

 

My source for information about orchids is Native orchids of Australia, including the island territories by David Jones (2006)

 

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By the highway

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Cymbidium suave

This post may look like repetition, but for me the discovery of a stump full of Cymbidium suave on the side of the major coast road between Sydney and Melbourne is worth another set of images of this lovely – and far from uncommon – orchid. I'm also patting myself on the back a bit, firstly because I spotted those strappy leaves as I was whizzing along at a respectable highway speed, and secondly because I saw them again on the return journey. My luck was in: there was a pull-over space opposite, so I got out and scrambled across some uneven dirt, over a couple of slabs of bark, and through some small dead branches for a photo-shoot. The sun was directly overhead, which gave me lovely flower-shadows, but also meant I had to avoid camera-and-photographer shadows. Here they are: the highway orchids.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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River road: the climax

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Cymbidium suave

Not the ocean. Not a jazz band. Not an encounter with an animal. Not only food and wine. I hope you’re not disappointed. I wasn’t!

My eyes look up the bank at the side of the road, and I behold (I need grand language) some strappy leaves pouring out of a hole in the trunk of a splendid (unidentified) eucalypt. Not daring to believe, I foot my way carefully up the slope and approach lavish sprays of small creamy-green flowers amongst the leaves. This indeed is a rousing end to the Symphony of the River Road. A snake orchid in glorious bloom.

Differences in colour are the result of using two cameras, not fiddling with parameters! I was too delighted by my find to play around with settings.

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