As the orchids have petered out traveling further east I’ve started looking at other plants and flowers. This image above may look like a boring little everlasting type flower but it’s when you look closer at numerous individual flowers and think about them, study them, that it starts to get interesting. This flower is like a little multi rocket launcher, rocket tubes opening up from the centre and the individual flowers begin to unfurl twisting their way up out of their launch tubes.
Starting to get towards the end of my orchid adventures for 2021. As I’ve moved further east the orchids have been thinning out and they are getting harder to find in these lower rainfall areas. I still have quite a few photos from the last week or two to post though here I’m going to concentrate on clowns, Caladenia roei.
The lazy spider orchid or Caladenia multiclavia, perhaps my favourite of all the orchids I’ve seen so far. I’m not sure why they call it lazy, I guess because of it’s reclined pose. I found lots of these in the area from Jerramungup through to Ravensthorpe, almost anywhere that there was some tree cover especially sheoaks was worth a look.
These king-in-a-carriage orchids reminded me of a pair of dancing Brolgas. Ok bird experts, perhaps not brolgas, though the photo certainly has an “Awwww” feel about it. This post is a pictorial of hammer and duck orchids, some were found in the Stirling Ranges while most came from a secret little location south of Mount Barker.
Northcliffe is a small town in the south west of W.A. near Pemberton. The population of Northcliffe is officially less than 500 people and it’s known for it’s farming as well as forestry and more recently in February of 2015 it became better known after one of Western Australia’s worst bush fires ravaged the area.
The Stirling ranges were the next hot spot on my list for wildflowers. Unfortunately the Stirling Ranges are only about 150km from the Fitzgerald river so there are a lot of the same plants in both areas, but the Stirlings have a third dimension which makes all the difference, height. The tallest peak in the park is Bluff Knoll and at 1099m high it’s the second highest mountain in W.A. and the only place that has regular snow in Western Australia.
You might be thinking it’s a strange picture to start a post about the Fitzgerald River National park, especially when I’ve been doing a wildflower tour around the south west of the state. After all the park is touted as having the most diverse collection of flora to be found within any park in Australia, it has 20 percent of Western Australia plant diversity within it’s boundaries and many plants are only found within the park.
