The Orchid Run:
in 2019 we found a place with 2 different species of orchids, not a lot of them, and mostly trampled by hikers or cows, so this year, we decided to check them again. Our initial attempt went short when we were evicted from the field by an angry lady, see previous episodes in this thread. Fortunately, Frank's interesting amazing social skills, as unpredictable as they are, brought us in contact with the father of the landowner. As you can guess, fatherhood is a close enough relationship to engage in a meaningful discussion with someone. Not always, I know, but I digress.
After a few mishaps due to the absence of cell phone coverage and the annoying reluctance of sms messages to breach the signal gap on their own, we got an official approval from the landowner, through his father, to freely roam his land in search of orchids. This was very welcome, although not really useful as future told us.
The rain thwarted our next attempt. It may be a surprise to some but even NG members do not willingly spend several hours soaked wet in search of a macro mug shot of a short purple flower. Anyway, I digress again.
This morning, we decided to go for the Orchid Run.
We found the orchids, well one of the two species of 2019 but in huge quantities to compensate, in several spots. We were a bit soaked but the enthusiasm of the massive discovery, over 100 specimens, took over, at least for Hans and I, Frank and Francis having developed a sudden passion for the nearby marine cemetery. Go figure ...
So here are a few orchids mug shots. I would not put them on the same scale as a bird on a perch, there is a distinguished botanist very close to me now and I would not like to spoil our last hours in the meet up, but they are my photos and I have no problem being brutally honest with myself. Anyway, the bird on a perch is also mine.
I almost forgot: the approval was not really useful because in the end, the approver is not the owner of the land where we found the orchids. The father was very friendly, so I shared the result and some photos with him anyway.
Here they are.
PS: The green stuff is obviously not an orchid. It is a deadly poisonous plant, well established next to the orchids. This being a defense mechanism of the trampled orchids of 2019 is uncertain, at least to me, I'm not an expert in the psychology of orchids. We thought it would be a nice gesture to warn those we thought were the owners of the land, which we did. This may also be useful to all those who would be tempted to collect something looking like a wild parsnip and eat it with the Sunday roast. To be clear, if you do it, you will die, and you family too. Painfully. Don't do it, we need you, NG supporters!
