Discover Western Australian Orchids
Hit the road!
Don' forget your hat and sunscreen and get ready to explore Western Australia! We will give conference participants access to maps and itineraries to orchid rich sites for one-day or two-days trips. Enjoy the peak flowering season with the amazing orchid diversity of Western Australia!
App available!
The Phone app version of Western Australian Orchid Key is now available from Google Play (Android phones) and the App Store (iPhone and iPad). Made by Western Australian orchid experts, it will support you in the identification of orchids that you will encounter during your trips. The app is FREE!
Post-Conference Tour
Introduction
The south-west of Western Australia is known as one of the world's 34 biodiversity ‘hotspots’ with some of the richest and most unique assemblages of plant and animal life on earth. In this area there are over 5700 plant species, 79% of these known from nowhere else in the world.
The orchids are particularly well represented with 29 genera and 451 species currently known from this area. These include some of the world’s most colourful and unusual species. The Fringed Mantis Orchid (Caladenia falcata) has a large green, yellow and red flower with a broad labellum and the unusual Western Australian hammer orchids (Drakaea species) have highly modified flowers with labella that emit pheromone-like odours and visually resemble female flower wasps to attract male wasps as pollinators.
The climate of the south-west is Mediterranean with cool, wet winters and hot dry summers. Under these conditions all orchid species are terrestrial and have adapted to the long dry summer months by dying back to dormant underground tubers. These tubers resprout following autumn rains and flower during the late autumn, winter, spring and early summer months with the majority flowering in the late winter-spring (August-October). At this time 40 or more species can be seen in flower during a three or four day field trip.
In this region, orchids are found in a range of habitats including seasonal swamps, granite outcrops, shrublands, woodlands and forests with all of these areas producing displays of orchids.
Some south-west orchids occur only over a small area where they are confined to a specific habitat while others are much more widespread and adaptable.
The south-west orchids are remarkably diverse in plant and flower size. The little laughing Leek (Prasophyllum gracile) is rarely taller than 150 mm, with flowers a mere 4 mm across while splendid white spider orchid (Caladenia splendens) grows to 800 mm high and has flowers up to 220 mm across. Many species have one or two flowers while some leek orchids (Prasophyllum spp.) have up to 50 or more flowers in a dense spike up to 2 m tall.
The Tour
The tour will take place during the peak orchid flowering season and it is estimated that between 40-50 species will be seen in flower, these representing a range of genera including Caladenia, Cyanicula, Diuris, Drakaea, Elythranthera, Ericksonella, Leptoceras, Microtis, Prasophyllum, Pterostylis and Thelymitra. During the tour many different orchid habitats will be visited including forests, woodlands, shrublands, seasonally wet areas and granite outcrops.
The tour itinerary is being developed by Andrew Brown, author of The Complete Orchids of Western Australia and co-author of Orchids of Western Australia, Field Guide to the Orchids of Western Australia and Orchids of South-West Australia. Andrew frequently organizes orchid tours to this part of Australia and is very familiar with the localities and the different orchids found in them. Andrew will be joining us on the tour.
Registration
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