Back after a bit of a break from posting!
Last week I decided to go and visit a good friend in Newcastle. I thought this was a great opportunity to look for some orchids on the way up and so, after a bit of consultation of The Book, I decided to go via the Blue Mountains.
There are 4 species of Bunochilus that I was after, all localised and more or less restricted to the Blue Mtns and surrounding areas: Bunochilus chocolatinus, B. lineatus, B. parcus and B. tenuis. As far as I could see, there were only a few photos online of B. chocolatinus and apparently none of the other three species. Challenge accepted!
On my way to the Blue Mtns, I took a beautifully scenic drive up through Crookwell and Bathurst before heading east to the Mtns. The road (and countryside) between Crookwell and Bathurst was great fun - what a beautiful part of the world. I stopped once to search for Plumatochilos plumosum in dry forest - I failed but found Linguella clavigera instead.
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| Linguella clavigera - a very small greenhood! |
There were lots of spring orchid leaves and shoots but the only ones actually flowering yet were Cyanicula caerulea. These gorgeous little orchids seem to be the first of the spring orchids to flower.
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| Cyanicula caerulea |
Then it was on to the Blue Mtns, via Bathurst. When I got to the mountains, I went to a site near Lithgow and headed off in search of Bunochilus. Things got off to a good start when I found some flowering Pterostylis pedunculata, and got even better when I spotted my first Bunochilus for the trip:
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| Bunochilus tenuis |
Look how wide the sepals are here! I believe this is Bunochilus tenuis, and have tentatively assigned the same name to the following Bunochilus I found in the area:
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| Bunochilus tenuis |
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| Bunochilus tenuis |
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| Bunochilus tenuis |
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| Bunochilus tenuis |
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| Bunochilus tenuis |
There seems to be a bit of variation in sepal width, labellum colour etc but as far as I can see these are all Bunochilus tenuis. You can see it was quite wet that afternoon as there is a big drop of water on the labellum of this plant:
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| Bunochilus tenuis with water drop |
I did, however, find one plant which didn't fit in with the rest:
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| Bunochilus sp. - note the small flower and relatively large labellum with very pale sides and basal mound. |
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| Bunochilus sp. - side-on view of the above plant. |
Right at the end of the afternoon, just as I was about to move on, I found the second species I was looking for - Bunochilus parcus:
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| Bunochilus parcus |
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| Bunochilus parcus |
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| Bunochilus parcus side-on |
The flowers were smaller and paler green than B. tenuis and the labellum was smaller and more triangular in a way.
Happy with my day's effort, I headed off a little down the mountain and set up camp at Perry's Lookdown, in Blue Mountains National Park near Blackheath. Great place to have a sunset beer overlooking a big valley.
The next morning I packed up and headed down to a place near Woodford. Here I was after B. lineatus and B. chocolatinus, and it wasn't too long before I had found a nice colony containing both species! It was mostly B. lineatus though:
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| Bunochilus lineatus |
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| Bunochilus lineatus flower head |
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| Bunochilus lineatus |
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| Bunochilus lineatus |
There was some left dew left over from the previous night on many of the flowers, which allowed for some cool photos:
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| Bunochilus lineatus with dew |
After some searching I found a few specimens of Bunochilus longifolius, the common species on the coast. I also found a few photogenic B. chocolatinus colonies:
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| Bunochilus chocolatinus |
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| Bunochilus chocolatinus - very nice flower head! |
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| Bunochilus chocolatinus - close-up |
And that was mostly about it. On the way back from Newcastle I drop past a spot in the Watagans I know of and found one lone Pterostylis hildae flowering...
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| Pterostylis hildae |
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| Pterostylis hildae |
Lots of greenhoods on this trip!
