Tasmania’s orchids | Peter Fehre

May’s Tasmanian Field Naturalist Club meeting was one of my favourites to date. Yeah, I am biased, because I love Tasmania’s native orchid population, but then who doesn’t right. We were lucky enough to have Peter Fehre come along and give us a run down on a whole bunch of endemic orchids, who they are, where they live, when they flower and also show us his remarkable photography. Including the critically endangered helmet orchids of Macquarie Island. Corybas dienemus and Corybas sulcatus are both being cultivated at the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens. They aren’t on display to the public, due to the very specific conditions which are needed for their growth. However Peter has been lucky enough to be able to photograph them. You can find more of his photography on his flickr album at www.flickr.com/photos/fehre/

Tasmania has a rich diversity in the terrestrial orchid world. With more than 200 species over about 32 genera, it really is the place to be! Our orchids aren’t the epiphytic ones that you buy in Bunnings for your mother on her birthday (yes, I got her a Phalaenopis). Ours like to live in the dirt, usually die back to a small tuber each year and act more like a Daffodil (but nothing like a Daffodil). We do have one epiphytic species which can be found in the north of the state amongst the Coprosma, Sarcochilus australis, and one on the east coast which can be found growing on rocks, Dockrilla striolata. Aside from those, the rest are in the ground, and are small, but in my opinion their brilliance rivals the great big tropical species.

If you are determined enough, you will find an orchid flowering pretty much every day of the year somewhere in Tasmania. There is a brilliant little flowering guide put out by dpipwe (http://dpipwe.tas.gov.au/Documents/Flowering-Times-of-Tasmanian-Orchids.pdf). Also has some good info in there on the different genera, a great resource for helping you work out who to look for and when! It is a rather quiet time of the year for orchids now, perfect time to study the flowering guide and work out your plan of attack for when spring arrives!

Peter has a wealth of knowledge and an infectious passion for the orchids. If you head over to the Tasmanian Native Orchid facebook page you will find him. And if you have orchid questions, he is more than happy to help. I suspect the one thing he loves as much as orchids is sharing what he knows and getting other people excited about them too! 

Handsome Caves Outing

Saturday’s Tasmanian Field Naturalist outing took us out to the back of New Norfolk to Handsome Caves, in Magra. I’d never been out there before, actually I haven’t explored much of the bush around that area at all, so I was keen to go. But then I am always keen to go anywhere in the bush really, and with a bunch of naturalists…

Getting there is fairly easy. Plug in ‘Handsome Caves Road’ into google maps, then follow the directions. We parked at the bottom of the road, mainly because there wouldn’t have been enough parking further up, but also because the road can get a little bit pot holey. It’s a nice enough walk up to the start of the track anyway, after you get past the property with all the hound dogs who bark their little heads off at you.

We had a pretty good turn out this month. I didn’t actually count heads, but about 17 of us I would estimate. Seventeen sounds like a lot of people to go on a bush wander, but it never seems like that many. Usually because we all end up scattered along the track. Some are usually hidden amongst the ferns looking for snails and other little critters in the decomposing wood and leaf litter, others are stuck trying to determine which species of plant they have, someone else is chasing a jumping spider along the rocks or staring into the trees wondering which bird is making which call. 

A hole in the ground is spotted and another 10 minutes is spent trying to see what is in the hole and how it got there… Turned out to be a moth, one that can take years to grow and burrows up from the plant roots, through the soil to build it’s little nest and grow it’s wings. After a bit of rain and when the ground is soft enough, then the moth can emerge and flutter away. I’d love to have seen the moth in question, because the home it left behind was freaking huge!

Tafoni

Around two and a half hours later we reached the caves. Some got there a bit quicker, others straggled, but at some point we all ended up there at once. Handsome Caves are sandstone caves formed in a massive outcrop. Over the years (probably millions) they have been eroded by the weather and have some of the most amazing honeycomb formations. One of our newest members is a geology head, and told us all about the formations which are referred to as ‘Tafoni’. In my googling I came across a great little article in the Tasmanian Geographic which talks all about it… What is tafoni?.

Most of the walk up to the caves is through dry Eucalyptus tenuiramis woodland, loads of nice spikey Bursaria spinosa and an interesting Pomaderris sp. I think we decided it was P. elliptica which weren’t in the healthiest state. Their leaves were quite pale and curled up and almost stunted. Yet every now and then, sometimes on the same plant there would be a striking difference, yet the same species. P. apetala was also there, but not in as many numbers. A new one for me was Chrysocephalum semipapposum. I possibly have come across it before but not paid attention to it… Super cute little yellow papery heads poking up in clusters. They really stood out, probably because not much else was in flower. There is a photo below.

As we got up toward the caves there was a distinct boundary from the upper side of the track to the lower part. The top was E. tenuiramis, and the bottom was a mix of E. globulus, E. viminalis and E. obliqua. It’s cool when you come across areas like this, where there is almost an invisible line keeping the species separated. 

Botanising is better with good company

’Twas a great day out botanising, once again, so much knowledge across a broad range of topics. I’m a plant person, I love all the other things of course, but my heart is with the flora. I am pretty lucky that thanks to the Field Nats I get to spend time following around some of the greatest plant people and pick their brains. People like Mick Brown, whose name is on many a paper I have read in relation to Tasmanian flora and ecology, who has an immense amount of knowledge and has no hesitations in passing it on. Genevieve and David who have taught me so much about fungi. Annabel and Geoff who between them can pretty much Id anything that grows. Aside from the actual knowledge I get from them, they are all so encouraging. I’m one semester away from finishing my degree, and being involved in the Field Nats has helped me more than I realise. I often battle with the “I’m close to 40 and only now finishing a degree and thinking about starting a career”… “I’m too old to be doing this shit now!”… They all help me remember the invaluable advice that my friend Lisa gave me when I went back to uni.

“You are going to be 40 anyway, may as well be 40 with a degree than without one!”

Next Field Nat meeting:  7the June, 7.15pm, at the University of Tasmania, Life sciences lecture theatre. 

Guest speaker: Richard Robinson, The Response of macrofungi species and Communities to Land Management in Southern Eucalypt Forests.

http://www.tasfieldnats.org.au

More reasons why you should join the Field Nats: Tasmanian Field Naturalists Club | Yes you should

The wonderful photography of Peter Fehre: https://www.flickr.com/photos/fehre/

My orchid collection, which is in desperate need of an update of all the ones I have photographed lately: Orchidaceae | The Gumboot Chronicles

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