There are indeed a huge number of arachnids in Perth’s Kings Park, but they are not uppermost in the minds of many visiting humans.
In springtime, it is spider orchids that draw many people.
Many of those humans wish to photograph them.
In their photos of spider orchids, actual spiders’ webs, and/or individual threads of spider’s silk, are often clearly visible; one such filament is present in the featured image, above.
Counter-intuitively – given that 2025’s winter was the present century’s wettest – this springtime is not a bumper one for spider orchids in Perth.
In 2025 “proper” rain did not begin to fall until much later than it “should”, following an uncommonly dry autumn.
Not a few WA flowering plants make their commitment to flowering – or to “giving it a miss, this year” – before June.
I think that in 2025 many local spider orchids opted to “give it a miss”.
Those that did commit to flowering – like some of 2025’s more optimistic WA grain growers, who planted crops before the excellent rains’ late arrival – have been proved “shrewd”…or lucky.
This September, King Park’s spider orchids appeared to be “below average” in number, but they were very high in quality – almost every one that we saw looked splendid and healthy.
