An excellent expedition around Genoa

On 1 October we went on an orchid hunt around Genoa.  We visited a couple of spots: one West of the village and the other towards Wangarabell.  The following is mainly to set out the photographs taken with orchids first, then other flowers and finally a couple of rock shots.

W finally found some Diuris sulphurea.  This is one of the commonest orchids around Canberra but we have not found any others until now.  (We had hoped to find D. punctata but didn't find any flowers - there were a few suspicious leaves at the first site.)

There were thousands of Glossodia major at both sites and along the road between them.

On my computer this appears less pink (or more towards blue) than in life.  It was a tiny little flower and quite common: I think Caladenia mentiens.

Diuris pardina was at both sites.

D. orientis was represented by a single plant at the second site

Spider orchids - and I will conform to the official name for the Genus as Caladenia - were profuse at the second site, once we got our eye in.  It appeared to me that many of them were C, ancyclosa.

I came to that conclusion by looking at the extent of the teeth on the edge of the labellum.

This photo is to show the two yellow features (calli?).

Some other specimens had less teeth and have been called C. piesleyi

There were also several  specimens of C. tentaculata, the Mantis orchid, which is quite common at the coast.

While searching for the spiders we came across a quite large colony of Leptoceras menziesii known as Hare's Ears or Rabbit orchid.  We'd never seen these before.

Lyperanthus suavolens (Brown beaks) was in small numbers at both sites. 

 I tend to think of this and Caleana major (Large Flying Duck) as linked, although I suspect that genetically they are as far apart as ducks and hares.  We found several ducks at the first site.    What was surprisingly absent was any species of Prasophyllum: last year we found several at the first site.

There were a quite a lot of small 'finger orchid' Caladenias at both sites.  I think this was C. fuscata.

The yellow tip to the labellum suggests C. alata.

Moving on to other families.  Sowerbaea juncea was very common at the first site.

I am calling the Patersonia to be P. glabrata as the flowers were at the same height as the foliage.  There are also some Sowerbaea.

A particularly large and dense clump of Patersonia glabrata.

This very colourful Drosera is D. spatulata.

It was interesting that at the second site all the orchids were above the road while the next three species only found below it.  Although the site is now very open the presence of Solanum prinophyllum suggest the forest was quite dense pre-fire,

Viola hederaceae

Brachyscome spathulata

I went below the rocks to check for interesting orchids in the rocks.  There were none, but this little stream was attractive.

As was a small pool below the cascade.