Dragons with attitude

I’d never really understood why these were called Dragon orchids until I took a photo of the orchids from above. As someone pointed out to me they do look a bit like dragonflies with their wings spread, but then take a look at those cute little dragon faces.

From side on they don’t look highly exciting and most of my photographs had been from similar angles side on.

If anything I thought Caladenia barbarossa just looked a bit messy with odd knobbly bits and a mass of fur on one end, not really aesthetically pleasing, until you look from above at the right angle and their cute little faces show up.

What a diverse bunch. They can be hard to see with the naked eye as they are only small, however after seeing the faces for the first time in the origin picture at the top, I decided to head back to an area I knew had lots of dragon orchids to take some more pictures.

It was a round trip of almost 400km to return to the spot I knew was thick with the orchids, and in reality the photos I got are only pretty average but they are good enough for you to get the idea.

And I’m not sure that they are worth posting in single images rather than just collages, but hey, it was a 400km round trip, so here they are.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think you get the idea, I have something like 70 to 80 of them, though I’ve been deleting a few of the worse ones as I go.  I may add to this over time because I know that every time I find a dragon orchid I will be taking a picture of it’s face.