October seems to be a busy month for all my usual climbing partners, so today I was out by myself. There was the option to head out with Mario, but after the big trip down south last weekend I didn’t fancy the five plus hour round car journey to Perth. Instead I headed back to Welly Dam to have another play on the potential new routes. And after today I’m now set on equipping three of them. The next step will be to clean of loose rock and figure out bolt placements. It was a fairly quick in and out session at the dam, and I was on the road by nine:
On a lovely day like today the place should already have be filled with mountain bikers and sightseers, but there were very few people about. The four day Cape to Cape mountain bike race had probably drawn all the two wheeled people south, while the Brunswick Show was no doubt drawing the usual sightseers northwards. As such it would have been the perfect day to be knocking loose rock off the walls. However, like this Bobtail as it plodded slowly off the path in front of me I am in no rush with the route development:
Taking advantage of the relatively quiet day, I took a slight detour on the way home and popped into Crooked Brook. Just three’ish weeks back I had great success here with spotting spider orchids (https://sandbagged.blog/2022/09/28/unlucky-for-some/), so I was hoping to continue with that theme. However, despite searching high and low I wasn’t able to locate one spider orchid. Not even an end of life bedraggled specimen. It was as if a pest controller had been through and eradicated all the spiders, or I had just left the return trip too long:
I was however a little pleased not to find any Pink Enamel Orchids. If I had found them here after the success down at Dunsborough (https://sandbagged.blog/2022/10/20/tickled-pink/), it may have indicated I simply had not been looking hard enough for all the years of searching for them. The most prevalent orchid on display and out in flower today was the Blue Lady Orchid (Thelymitra crinita), above. There were also quite a few Scented Sun Orchid (Thelymitra macrophylla), below, but it seemed too early for them to open up:
Of all the sun orchids the Blue Lady and Scented Sun Orchids can have more flowers on each stem, at fifteen plus. So based on the number of buds and colours it was pretty clear that the above orchids were the Scented Sun Orchids. Only the Plain Sun Orchid (Thelymitra paludosa) can have more flowers, at a whopping twenty plus per stem. They however prefer winter-flats and do not flower till Nov, so I might come across them at Manea Park next time I head there:
I’ve previously mentioned that one of the ways to identify similar looking sun orchids is to check out the column and wings, https://sandbagged.blog/2022/09/24/let-the-hammer-fall/. So when I spotted a few non-Blue Lady Orchids that were open, such as the ones above, I took special note of the centre of the flower to allow me to check them out later. I was also intrigued by the small plant and flower size, but the big give away was the upward pointing column tufts due to the right angle bend in the arms:
Sure enough I had spotted the Slender Sun Orchid (Thelymitra vulgaris), and it is always possible that there was another species I stumbled across that I just was not observant enough to notice the difference. To finish with and to show I also appreciate the many other flowers, below is a Fringe Lily (Thysanotus multiflorus). This flower is endemic to the Southwest Australia, but is also a popular clumping grass-like perennial used in domestic gardens. It is also known by the potentially politically incorrect name of Frilly Knickers:
Sandbagged 