More Orchids

Orchid season has been rather busy and I’ve been trying to capture as much as I can, traveling all over the south west of Western Australia as the season progresses.

Red-veined Shell Orchid Pterostylis hamiltonii eating a drosera

I’m including a few botanical names with the photos, where they are obvious and I’m fairly certain of what they are, though once we start getting into the spiders, forget it. Spider orchids can be notoriously difficult to identify as many are fairly similar, many others have great variety within the one species, and a lot of them can crossbreed.

Corybas recurvus – helmetorchid

No mistaking some of these more unusual orchids like shells and helmets though.

Thelymitra uliginosa – southern curly locks

I watched these curly locks plants for weeks waiting for them to flower. Last year I spotted them after the flowering had finished and I thought they were queen of sheba orchids because of the very unusual spiral leaves.

Curly locks leaf and bud

 

Caladenia reptans – Dwarf pink fairy

This next one is beautiful, a midge orchid dancing with a drosera plant.

Cyrtostylis huegelii – Midge Orchid

 

Close up of a midge orchid

I found an area filled with thousands of midge and mosquito orchids on a family property in Denmark, which also included a patch filled with dozens of lutea forms of the orchid. Lutea orchids are a genetic diversity or mutation where a plant has no colour, it’s straight green and/or yellow with no colour pigments.

Lutea midge orchid

I feel like I could have made a whole post on the midge and mosquito orchids, just beautiful little things growing out of mossy grounds amongst the droseras.

Midge

 

A flock of midges

Argh, yes, so many orchids to post up from over the past 3 or 4 months.

pass

I did say I wasn’t going to attempt to name the spider orchids, the orchid above is a Caladenia longicaudia, pretty certain of that, but there are then about 14 subspecies. Throw in the fact that there can be wide variation in each and any of these, as well as crosses with other species, speaking of crosses.

Wheatbelt spider orchid

The wheatbelt spider is a cross between Caladenia longicaudia and a Caladenia falcata, the green spider orchid.

Wheatbelt spider

Wheatbelt spiders can be a very beautiful mix.

Wheatbelt spider

 

Wheatbelt spider

Once again, I could make a whole post about these beauties, but I should probably stop posting them.

Wheatbelt spider

One parent of the wheatbelt spider is the Caladenia longicaudia pictured below, and under that is the other parent Caladenia falcata

Triple banger C. longicaudia

 

Caladenia falcata – green spider orchid

I might leave this post as is for now, I have months worth of orchid pictures I want to post but I need to sort through them a little.

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