Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
Generally, sun orchids – the 100+ members of the genus Thelymitra – are true to their common name.
They orient their flowers to the sun, open them only when it shines brightly upon them, and always close them before nightfall.
I am no botanist, but am 90 percent certain that there is just one kind of time and place to enjoy an entirely-natural encounter with the pictured, very elegant blue sun orchid species: on a sunny day in southwestern WA.
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In Perth the pictured species is indeed common, but Perth is the only Australian capital city which is within its home range
In springtime in Perth Diuris corymbosa – the common donkey orchid, aka “wallflower orchid” – is usually conspicuously present in just about any “bushy” location.
Spring 2025 is a bumper one for this species.
Inevitably, some folks fail to appreciate its beauty, simply because it is so common in Perth, so easy to see.
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The relevant “fairies” are Caladenia Latiffolia – an Australian orchid species, commonly known as “pink fairy orchids”, or simply “pink fairies”.
I took the photo near the western side of Lake Claremont at 3.46 pm on 19 September.
The floral diversity in southwest WA is phenomenal, globally.
Many of the region’s beautiful, often wondrous-strange flowering plants are endemic – in the wild, they occur nowhere else on earth.
Not a few are endemic to just a tiny portion of WA; for a few species, their entire “home range” is a single hill in The Stirling Range.
Comments closedYes, the beach really is that white, and the ocean shallows’ shades of blue are also “true”.
(the various blues’ intensity is in large part thanks to the sand’s whiteness, acting in concert with the sun, high in a clear sky)
The featured image looks down (and east, over Yokinup Bay, to Mt Arid) from Belinup Hill in Cape Arid National Park; visible, “naked” sand occupies a small portion of the photo, but millions of tons of “hidden” sand are invisibly-present through most of its field of view.
Southern WA has some of the world’s poorest soils, but what grows in and “hides” those very sands is (arguably) “our” planet’s greatest natural wildflower “show”.
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Pelican Yoga briefly interrupts its ongoing celebration of autumn 2024 on the Coorong, to celebrate the arrival of spring, in Perth.
Western Australian wildflowers are not fussed about calendars, nor European-derived notions of “the four seasons”.
Four days before the alleged end of winter, in Shenton Bushland it was abundantly evident that spring had already “sprung”.
Kangaroo Paws are now easy to see, as are some (not all, yet) of the “spring-flowering” orchids.
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Elythranthera – known as “enamel orchids” – is a petite genus, endemic to Western Australia’s southwest.
It has just two species-proper, plus one “recognised” other form.
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A suitable title for this post’s hero:
The Lonely Spider
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The “donkey” is an orchid.
The “spider” is an actual spider, on the orchid.
The large orchid is impossible to miss.
However, to enjoy a good look at the tiny spider you should zoom in on/ enlarge the featured image… and then inspect the uppermost part of the donkey orchid.
Comments closed…and I don’t mean Bluff Knoll, on which snow has fallen five times during Winter and Spring in 2021 – making this year Western Australia’s snowiest in more than half a century.
I have been “snowed” these past couple of weeks, so the promised flood of posts to celebrate southwest Western Australia’s incredible 2021 Spring has been delayed.
The floodgates will open, soon – flowers galore, but also fire, feathers, rocks, seascapes…
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