This season the slipper orchids are flowering magnificently, so I took Dad to see and photograph a bunch of them that were easily accessed. I have found them on the lee side of a ridge within sight of the sea (after a steep and sandy climb) and at the base of a swale two dunes inland from the sea (after a long walk down a boggy track) as well as close to the inlet. The first flowers opened in December, they are still flowering with many more buds still to open.
Slipper orchids (Cryptostylis ovata) are pollinated by the male Ichneumon wasp Lissopimpla semipunctata who mistakes the flower for a female wasp and transfers the pollen on trying to mate sequentially with a number of flowers.
This orchid is the only native terrestrial orchid in Western Australia to have a green leaf all year. For all the other species of terrestrial orchids, the leaf is present for only part of the year. Here is a small colony of leaves with a flower spike just beginning in November.
While Dad was here I did a bit of research on feral mammals for his last lecture. I was amazed at the sheer numbers of ferals estimated to be munching and scrunching and slurping through the Australian landscape.
Here are a few of the figures; goats 2.6 million, dromedaries over 1 million, donkeys 5 million, horses 400,000, water buffalo 150,000, cats 15-20 million, pigs 23 million, fox 7 million, rabbit 200 million.
These figures are all estimates, and the numbers fluctuate with droughts and good seasons, control programs and live harvesting, and disease cycles.
Camels photographed at Mary Mia station by Mark.