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Greenhoods: Perth’s Kings Park in winter

All but one of this post’s photos were taken on a single midwinter day. This is when relatively few flowers bloom…but it is prime time for Pterostylis – the orchid genus more commonly known as Greenhoods.

If you love flowering plants the best places to live are the southwestern corners of Africa and Australia.

If you also prefer to live in a substantial city, you have two choices: Cape Town or Perth.

The world’s greatest flower shows are not curated events – they occur naturally, each spring, in the aforementioned “corners”.

That said, in these brilliant corners, beautiful flowers can be seen by anyone who cares to look, at any time of year…even if you “never get out of town”.

From the heart of Perth’s CBD a free bus will take you to Kings Park in a few minutes; your own feet could easily take you there in less than half an hour.

Yesterday, my beloved and I went looking for Greenhoods.

 

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They were not at all hard to find, but not a few walkers managed to walk right on by, unseeing.

 

All photos copyright Doug Spencer
All photos copyright Doug Spencer

 

Even at this “drab” time of year, there are plants in flower that no walker could pass by, unseeing. (unless “disabled” by Pokemon-addiction, as were many who yesterday wasted their walk in the park)

 

A hakea, I think. Kings park, July 2016. Copyright Doug Spencer.
A hakea, I think. Kings park, July 2016. Copyright Doug Spencer.

 

Flowering plants, in flower, are not the only things worth looking down to see.

 

Banksia cone & leaves - both fallen to ground, with winter growth around them.
Banksia cone & leaves – both fallen to ground, with winter growth around them.

 

..or looking up to see.

 

A venerable, dead tree's stump, with a more slender, living tree behind it.
A venerable, dead tree’s stump, with a more slender, living tree behind it.

 

Just after I took the above photo the late afternoon sun obligingly – and briefly – entirely escaped the clouds, thus enabling me to focus a little closer on some banded Greenhoods

 

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And here’s an aerial view, which I took last year.

 

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Published in nature and travel photographs Western Australia

One Comment

  1. Inkku Inkku

    Amazing photographs! We are inspired to book a trip to WA in September now.

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