Hyacinth Orchids

I always find it extraordinary that as summer entrenches itself and the ground dries and hardens, and the leaf litter and debris crackles, up pops the Hyacinth Orchid Dipodium sp.

Hyacinth orchid

There are many different microclimates on my 6 acre dry sclerophyll forest site. Moist gullies, some grassy open forest and the dry north facing ridge slope. This last one is where the orchids are thriving at the moment. My drive way is lined by orchids at the moment, I see a delightful avenue of them as I drive in and out.

Driveway on northfacing dry forest slope

Most years the emerging shoots are nipped off by something. Probably Swamp wallabies and maybe Hares. The nips usually kill them but these have survived. These are near a wallaby track that crosses the road.

Pruned orchid with few flowers

Maybe we have a shortage of Wallabies or Hares and thus an abundance of orchids. It's always so hard to know what causes an observation.

There are the dark stemmed

And the light stemmed.

What I find fascinating is that these plants are saprophytic, which means that because they don't have  chlorophyll  they live symbiotically with a nearby Eucalyptus tree/s via mycorrhizal fungi. Very clever. They can not be cultivated. I can't tell you how extraordinary and reassuring I find it that there are some things humans can't manipulate.

Oceans of plastic

I have always been aware of the dangers of plastic to our natural world. I think most people dont think its got anything to do with them. But as with most change movements, those with influence and power need to be convinced by the actions of us the ordinary and average citizen.

I'm in Bali at the moment. It is never far from my mind and observation that we humans consume and pollute every where we go. Disposable packaging on the flight was every where. The prewrapped blanket, headphones gave way to the supplied lunch with sachets for this and that.

Where I'm staying the ubiquitous plastic bottles for drinking water are absent. The room has this nifty reusable 10 litre water vessel that sits on dispenser, providing hot and cold water.

The owners have also taken a position on A/C that is refreshing. People are billed for the power used to run the air conditioning. It means people dont leave it running unnecessarily.

I have lovely Dutch parents.  So I might be biased when it comes to the endeavours of Dutch people.
The Netherlands has an extraordinary history of land modification. Reclaiming land that was once covered in sea water and engineering the landscape so that it drains allowing for vast areas of food production. The dutch are in the fortunate position to have engineering solutions for global warming symptoms like extreme weather events and rising sea levels.

One Dutch man who has his sights further a field than Holland is Boyan Slat his campaign to clean up the plastic accumulating in the oceans is inspiring. Have a look at The ocean cleanup page and if you can contribute to their project.

Co2 levels and vegetation growth

On my bush block dominated by Eucalyptus trees, the canopies look the best I can ever remember. They are full of large glossy new leaves.

We had a very wet winter and spring, so much so that when we buried our cat, the hole that we dug, approx 60 cm down had very damp clay, and that was in the middle of summer. I think its fair to say that water plus CO2 allows plants to grow faster.

But nothing is ever straight forward. Im no scientist but am a very keen observer of my environment.
Im very curious about how the ever increasing levels of CO2 are contributing to vegetation growth.

An ABC report from 2010 talked about some negative side effects from increased vegetation growth as a result of increased atmospheric CO2.

• Some plants increase that amount of toxins in their leaves to reduce palatability
• Other plants reduce the amount of proteins in the leaves

For native fauna who rely on already fairly impoverished vegetation especially Koalas this might have really negative consequences.