Orchids found amongst the Leeches

These Tall Greenhoods (Bunochilus longifolius) were the reason I got my "cut-throat Leech" I wrote about yesterday (an answer to Kirsten's question on Facebook).

Portrait of Bunochilus longifolius

Note how the Labellum is "set". 
It is highly sensitive and snaps upward, when triggered by an insect (also by casual movement of the flower - such as being bumped by the photographer).
 
The purpose of the sensitive labellum is to trap insects temporarily, inside the hood, to help initiate pollination. The insect gets trapped inside the hood, and the pollinia are sticky and if the insect touches them they attach to it. You can see where the "pollinia" are located within the "Galea" (hood). After the labellum snaps closed, it stays closed for approximately 30 minutes. Then the labellum relaxes, and opens naturally, allowing the insect to escape, hopefully with the sticky pollen grains attached, to wing its way to another flower.

It sounds a hit or miss system of pollination, but it has been working for Orchids for some 15 million years, according to evidence found recently in  fossilized plant resin (amber) which shows evidence of ancient insects carrying equally ancient pollen grains.

Leaves of non-flowering plant
of Bunochilus longifolius

Leaves of Bunochilus longifolius
this plant is developing an upright stem and the
long, pointed leaves, from which it earns its name.

Flowering stem of Bunochilus longifolius

This flower of Bunochilus longifolius
 is fresh and the lateral sepals
(which sit below the labellum)
have not yet separated
They normally split up the middle.
You can see what I mean in
the bottom of the image immediately above.

These plants flower in a Melaleuca squarrosa thicket, which is found in a small stream-bed, along the Belmore Falls Road, several kilometres from Robertson. The Melaleucas grow very densely, creating dense shade. Apart from some ferns, very little grows as ground-cover in the middle of the thicket. There is very dense fern growth and dangerous Sword Grass clumps just outside the thicket, but once you get in the centre, there is very little other plant growth, apart from the closely set stems of the Melaleuca trees.

This season has been much wetter than previous years, and so the lower end of this thicket is now permanently wet (with between 3 and 6 inches) of permanent water, flowing slowly through the thicket. The "soil" here is actually deep leaf litter consisting of peaty material formed by the tiny leaves of the Melaleuca trees above.

Cut-throat Leech

Not a new species, just a new attack approach.

This Leech obviously thought attacking my ankles and shins was too "boring". He certainly got me by the Jugular (or close to it, anyway).

I had blood dripping onto my fingers, and didn't know where it was coming from.

I went to the bathroom mirror and saw my throat bleeding.

Then I saw a Leech buried amongst my silvery beard.

Of course I then did what they always tell you not to do, which is just "rip it off". (Don't do that folks) Better to apply salt (very difficult on one's own throat), or try rubbing it with Tea tree Oil or Eucalyptus Oil. They don't like it, and release themselves, sealing the wound before they leave, with a little injection of anti-coagulant. (DJW EDIT: Wrong, I meant coagulant - see note at end, and Martin's comment)

Eventually I was successful in ripping the Leech off, but then I realised I was in for more trouble, because I had 'attacked it" not persuaded it to "release itself - in a sensible manner".

The Leech had not "released itself" properly, which involves injecting the anti-coagulant juices they normally use, to prevent their host" (me) bleeding, after they have left off drinking. (Same silly mistake as above - see notes below, and Martin's comment)

Consequently, a few minutes later, after disposing of the Leech, I looked again, and this is what I saw. Blood was literally running down my throat.

My chin is held high, and the rest is throat, 

and the neck of my jumper is just visible.

 It is very hard photographing one's own throat (using a flash).

Eventually I got one image which more or less worked.

For reference purposes, I must have picked up this little hitch-hiking parasite when I had visited a Melaleuca thicket half-way down along Belmore Falls Road. This is a wet creek-bed, but I have never had leech problems there, before. I expect them in the Robertson Rain Forest, but not in the sandstone-based Eucalypt forest (through which this narrow strip of Melaleuca trees, and the creek, runs).


And this occurred on 2 July - close to mid-winter.
I blame Global Warming for this unseasonal attack.

Should I blame the Carbon Tax as well?

Everyone else seems to do equally strange things.

For the record, re this anti-coagulant vs coagulant business, I do know what the Leeches do to facilitate their drinking of my blood, and afterwards:

I wrote the following on Facebook, yesterday, in answer to a question:

• Leeches are brilliant chemical engineers.
  The Pharmacists have tried to copy their chemicals.
  They inject a pain killer firstly - so you don't notice them starting to suck.
  Then they inject an anti-coagulant, so the blood flows freely.
  Then when they are ready to leave, they inject an opposite chemical, a clotting agent, a coagulant, so the host (me in this case) does not bleed to death (afterwards).
  However, if you disturb them, sometimes they do not get to inject the clotting agent.

My problem was that I wrote this post too quickly, prior to going to Tuesday Night Trivia at Three Creeks Cafe. I tried to short-cut the explanation and got it wrong. Sorry everybody.
Thanks Martin for correcting me.

Chestnut-breasted Shelducks (Mountain Ducks)

This morning I was planning to go bird watching at Bundanoon, joining with the good folk over there, for a Winterfest event. After rising at 6:30 am to check for a early emails, before I was to go out for the day, I sat at the computer for about 15 minutes, and realised my toes were aching with cold. 

I retreated to my bed (with an electric blanket turned on).
Apologies to the good folks of Bundanoon, but some things seem unreasonably painful.

Later in the day, (much later) I went out heading towards Bundanoon (no doubt out of a sense of guilt).

I got as far as the wonderful farm dam close to the Nowra Road turn-off, (from the Illawarra Highway). This wonderful dam is part of Sowter's Dairy, Nowra Road, Moss Vale. It never fails to reveal a small community of ducks whenever I drive towards Moss Vale.

As I drove past, I checked it out (as I always do) and I thought I had spotted a pair of "Mountain Ducks" (Australian Shelducks, or Chestnut-breasted Shelducks).
 

These birds are decidedly uncommon in the Southern Highlands of NSW, so I immediately turned back, and pulled up opposite the dam. The birds responded by moving to the far side of the dam (naturally). I managed to get a few half-way decent photographs. At least they show the differences between the male and the female birds.

Female Australian Shelduck, Chestnut-breasted Shelduck
note the white eye mark and white spot on beak
chestnut breast is darker than the male bird.

Female Australian Shelduck, Chestnut-breasted Shelduck

Male "Sheldrake"
Note his cinnamon coloured breast
and the clear ring mark on the neck.
Australian Shelduck, Chestnut-breasted Shelduck
When I was learning about birds, these birds were called
"Mountain Ducks"

Ignore the confusing names
This is a handsome bird
and he knows it!

And so does his lady friend.

Here are some other links to bird reference sites for ths species.

http://ibc.lynxeds.com/species/australian-shelduck-tadorna-tadornoides

http://www.birdpedia.com/au/bi.dll/bipu02?m=006&id505=M000000422

http://avibase.bsc-eoc.org/species.jsp?avibaseid=FF1439E472DBFDC1

http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/species/Tadorna-tadornoides 

And a link to a fabuous photo of a male bird:

http://www.birdpedia.com/au/bi.dll/bipu03?m=510&id505=M000000422&id528=image&id527=m000000422_0002&id902=0

Finally a note about the terminology.

The name which was featured in the bird books when I was a kid was Mountain Duck.
Then they became known as Chestnut-breasted Shelduck.
The irony of this is that the name perfectly describes the female of the species, but not the male.
He would be better described as "cinnamon-breasted Sheldrake". That is the one option which has never been used.

Then with the internationalisation of names, they became the Australian Shelduck.

But linguistic tradition has it that the male birds ought be Sheldrakes.

• They were originally known as "sheldrakes", this remained the most common name until the late 19th century. The word is still sometimes used to refer to a male shelduck. (Wikipedia)

But it does not "fit" with scientific terminolgy to apply a name to a species, which specifically refers to only the male birds.

As an example of how we can get caught up in ridiculous linguistic conundrums, consider the genus Pavo: "The male is called a peacock, the female a peahen, and the offspring peachicks"
Modern terminology has settled on Peafowls, but hardly any birdwatcher, or keeper of tame birds of this genus would not call them "peacocks" in a relaxed moment, at the end of a day.

Time will stand still on Sunday morning.

"Because the Earth is slowing down, time on the clock gets a little ahead of the time told by the sun, so we have to delay the clocks by adding an extra second,'' the National Measurement Institute's Bruce Warrington said."

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/science/hold-on-a-second-and-let-it-sync-in-20120627-212ws.html#ixzz1zFzZ2jJD

Salvador Dali - Melting clock image

Because World Time is dominated by Greenwich (the Royal Observatory, and the home of the Greenwich Prime Meridian and all that stuff), the adjustment will occur when our clocks are about to kick over to 10:00:00 AM (Australian Eastern Standard Time).

• "Before atomic clocks were introduced in the 1960s, the Earth's rotation was key to defining time. After it was realised that the rotation was variable, the orbit of the Earth was used until the arrival of the atomic clock" (SMH as above)

But there is a group in Paris which monitors the world's banks of Atomic clocks which have made astronomical calculation of time almost irrelevant. But world time still is set on Greenwich Mean Time.

Unfortunately, the Tech Heads in Paris speak in Tech Head short-hand:

1 July 2012, 0h UTC
Until further notice, the value of DUT1 to be disseminated with the
time signals will be: DUT1 = +0.4 s

You got that I trust.

Wikipedia has a few words to try to help us, but their words don't mean much to me.

• The time correction DUT1 (sometimes also written DUT) is the difference between Universal Time (UT1), which is defined by Earth's rotation, and Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which is defined by a network of precision clocks.
  

  DUT1 = UT1 − UTC

That's where the kiddies at the National Measurement Institute in Canberra come in and translate, and disseminate this information to us all.

"Leap Second

Time will stand still for a second on Sunday 1 July 2012 when the nation's timekeepers add a second to keep the atomic clock in sync with the Earth."

The Sydney Morning Herald ran the story several days ago, to warn us all.

Everything which involved clock calculations, time read-outs and all data records need to be adjusted to keep "in synch" with everything else in the world. Banks, computers, all technical measuring devices everywhere.

For the rest of us, "joe public" who all carry watches, mobile phones, even my Digital Camera has a clock code in it. We all rely upon time signals (more or less). The "Pips" - which only operate on ABC AM Radio broadcasts these days, (have you noticed - the Pips are not broadcast on FM, because there is a built-in delay in the reception, and it is supposedly illegal to broadcast a time signal which is incorrect, so FM radio does not use the "Pips".

So Yes - Time can stand still:

But only for a second, every fifteen years or so, when the French boffins decide.

If the slowing rotation of the Earth a fore-teller of the End of the Earth?
Almost certainly, but not just yet, OK?

Winter flowers - Snowdrops or Galanthus

I have loved these flowers for many years, long before I ever owned any.

I bought some before I moved to Robertson.
I held them in pots for a couple of years, while I lived in a tin shed, and before my house was built.

Eventually I planted them out.

And then I forgot where they were.

They managed to flower last year, and yet again, I was surprised to "discover them" (all over again).

Sounds like "Gardening with Asbergers" doesn't it?

Galanthus elwesii

But after the passing of the Winter Solstice, I was thrilled to notice these lovely flowers blooming, nearly overgrown, in my garden.

A clump of Snowdrops (Galanthus)
These differ from "Snowflakes"
which are similarly green and white,
winter flowering bulbs.

Hardy, pretty  little things.

They have to be hardy to survive and flower in what passes for a garden in my wilderness.

GALANTHUS 

Galanthus elwesii

"The true snowdrops are perhaps the best of all early flowering bulbs, appearing through the bleakest period of the year and heralding the imminent arrival of a new season. Most are easy but we never have enough of the cultivars and prices may appear steep but they are expensive for us to purchase and acclimatise." Source: Hill View Rare Plants

Galanthus elwesii

Much larger flowered and vigorous species than G. nivalis with greyish leaves that are hooded at the tips. Generally the flower has green markings at both the base and the tip of the inner segment

A few Orchids from Comerong Island

Last weekend the Illawarra Branch of the Australasian Native Orchid Society went on an excursion to Comerong Island. See the introduction to this post, for location and geographic information about the Island. It was intended to be an Orchid trip, but we found more varieties of Fungi than Orchids (much to the frustration of my friend Colin Rowan).

We saw literally thousands of leaves of Pterostylis curta and some Pterostylis nutans. None were in flower, unfortunately.

However, Alan Stephenson was on a mission to re-locate a group of variegated Pterostylis curta plants which he had seen a few years previously. This required a  bit of walking along one section of track several times until Alan spotted what he was after.

There were a few, not many, of these unusually marked plants.

Such markings are uncommon, but not unknown. Possibly they were originally affected by a virus (as has famously happened with Tulips), but it seems that these plant markings are stable, not variable, nor likely to be an infection, which might otherwise kill these plants off, (or spread to others around them).

Variegated leaves of Pterostylis curta

Variegated leaves of Pterostylis curta

We then photographed some of the hundreds of Helmet Orchids

which were carpeting the ground

along the side of the track.

Corybas fimbriatus, the Fringed Helmet Orchid

Corybas fimbriatus, the Fringed Helmet Orchid

Corybas fimbriatus, the Fringed Helmet Orchid
A colony of them in the sand dunes, in the Littoral Rainforest

We drove along the single lane track which goes the full length of Comerong Island, out to the wharf at Crookhaven River (the redirected Shoalhaven River mouth). The last kilometer of the track had many deep puddles, but they were on solid bases, so, although a little scary (I had visions of cars getting stuck) Alan pressed through quite successfully. Definitely this last bit was 4WD only.

Acianthus fornicatus
This was one of very few in flower, but there
were literally hundreds of leaves of these plants growing
in certain patches of the forest, especially in disturbed areas
(e.g., where NPWS had bulldozed fallen logs
off the road, and into the forest).

Close to where the hundreds of Acianthus were,
we also found a few late blooming Cobra Greenhoods

Pterostylis grandiflora - the Cobra Greenhood

And finally we found a few very bedraggled,
but recognisable specimens of Bunochilus tunstallii

This Bunochilus tunstallii had collapsed,
and the flower had been triggered closed
but I was able to open the flower
to reveal the diagnostic brown labellum.
Bunochilus longifolia has a
cream labellum with a fine dark brown stripe up the middle.

More of the Fungi from Comerong Island

Please read this in conjunction with yesterday's post.

One thing I did not explain yesterday was that the original purpose of the Comerong Island trip was to look for various Ground Orchids. I was with the local Australasian Native Orchid Society people. As such I did not take the time which would have been necessary to examine all these Fungi in detail - with photos of gills, etc, in all cases.
 

Consequently some of these IDs are simply based upon similarities with published images, in Bruce Fuhrer's "Field Guide to Australian Fungi", or in the Sydney Fungal Studies Group website, or other published web images. I have linked to other known authoritative sources, where possible.

A baby Polypore?
Quite hard, not squishy.
and not a Gilled or Bolete Fungus

Unknown red-brown gilled fungus

Probably Cortinarius rotundisporus
A steely-blue cap, with yellow "umbo"
which increases in prominence as the Fungus ages.

I love to call these cute little lumpy jelly fungi
"Gummy Bears" (in honour of sweets of that name).
They are also known as "Jelly Babies"
The official name is Leotia lubrica

Possibly Clavaria miniata, "Flame Fungus"
This and the next couple of images are of
relatives of the "Coral Fungi"
But they are growing singly, and
not showing the typical divided heads
of Coral Fungi.
These forms are not rare, just different from
the classic Coral Fungi
and because they are very small, they are less easily seen.

A small specimen probably in what is known as
part of the Clavulina cristata complex.

Another specimen of
the Clavulina cristata complex

 

A type of Polypore or Bracket Fungus.
This does not grow from a dead tree, as most "brackets" do
but has a stem arising from the ground.
It has a distinctly leathery texture
allowing it to be bent over to reveal
the undersurface.(see below)

Undersurface of this leathery fungus.
It does not show obvious gills, but lines
which radiate out from the stem.
it is possible that it is related to the Gomphus complex of fungi
(note there are Dragonflies which share that name).

A fine gilled capped Fungus
with a dark stem.
Not sure what type.

This one I DO KNOW
Ghost Fungus. A luminous fungus.
Omphalotus nidiformis

Some unusual Geastrum (Earth Star) Puffballs
The reddish colour and poorly divided outer shells
make these somewhat unusual.

Another type of brown viscid gilled fungus
This one has a prominent "umbo"

A clump of moss growing on the ground,
with a small Mycena at left

This Mycena I did pick
to show the fine basal "hairs"
low down on the stem.
(Click on image to enlarge it)
This specimen was growing
from the moss on rotting wood