A short walk

 After yesterday's epic  today's walk was quite short - 3 km - but pretty spectacular! From parking on the side of Genoa Rd  we walked a dirt track loop.  The track was rather muddy after 10+ mm of rain but there were a few flowers around.

From point 1 we were in a grass tree plain, with both Xanthorroea resinosa (most plants, without an above ground trunk) ...

... and X. australis with a stump.  The facial adornment is obfuscation not an extreme face mask!  My guess is that my friend is about 160 cm tall which makes the spike on this one around 3 m!

The reason we came this way was that a member of the group had seen a Beard Orchid yesterday at point 2.  Her attention was grabbed by a very tall Trigger plant (Stylidium graminifolium).  Once there it rapidly became difficult to work out where to put one's feet: there were orchids everywhere.  As it was still drizzling my phone photos were hopeless so I went back later to get some better photos.

As I suspected there were at least 2 species present.  This is Calochilus robertsonii (Purple Beard) with a very full barbatic ornament.

A sparser adornment is shown by C. paludosus (Red Beard-orchid).  This is described as "fairly uncommon" in East Gippsland.

These appear to be the only two representatives of the genus in this area (although others are noted in "Orchids of East Gippsland" as being found in the Genoa area).

Incidentally, on Googling the book I found it listed by a mob called Natural History Book Service: they offer delivery in 2-4 months (!!!) and charge £59.99 (=$110 !!!!).  Better to stick with Bairnsdale and District Field Nats for postal service or, if you're in Mallacoota, the Visitors Centre.

The rain seemed to have paused around 1300 hrs on the 7th of October so I went back for a more detailed look.  The main result of the reduced rain was that the small insects - possibly mozzies - were more evident.  As suggested above I could only find the 2 species of Beardie described above.  I'd split the area I visited into 3 units as shown below.

Our efforts yesterday were restricted to part of the area outlined in yellow and I gave that a reasonable looking at today.  Google Earth tells me the distance between the 2 tracks is ~150 m and my eyeballs tell me the area I surveyed was about a cricket pitch length in width (if that is comprehensible)!so the area concerned there was 3,000 sq m.  At times there were 10 -20 Calochilus within a 4 sq m area (definitely not socially distanced) while there were some fair bits of territory with no orchids.  I suspect an average of 1 Bearded Orchid per 5 sq m would be a conservative estimate for this area overall.  That resolves to about 600 Beardies in total in that patch, roughly evenly split between the two species.  However we went back on the 8th and could not find anywhere near as many Beardies: either the 48 hours of rain battered them into submission or my eye was on go-slow on the later visit- equally likely. 

The red area had a greater extent of Bracken cover and I only found about 20 Bearded Orchids in there and mainly C. robertsonii.  The blue area seemed devoid of Bearded Orchids but I did find a few Thelymitra (almost certainly T. ixioides).

On the visit on the 8th I found one pink Sun Orchid - most likely T. carnea - and a cluster of Microtis sp.  (Onion Orchids, either M. unifolia or M. parviflora).  They didn't look quite "right" for M. unifolia and I couldn't see a notched labellum so will take a punt on M. parviflora.

Part of the reason for going back to the area was to check that there were no Calochilus campestris in the Beardies.  This species is shown in Joy's book but Mallacoota isn't listed in the main Orchid book (which is fair enough as the books are for the "Wilderness Coast" and "East Gippsland" not just Mallacoota).  However we could find any specimens of this species.