Christmas Road Ride Brings Orchids : December 25 2022

Going to be a different Christmas Day. No family and we are going a few houses across for lunch with friends. Menu is more seaside than Christmas. My wife is making salads and she baked the cake yesterday

Gives me an opening to go for a ride. There is a nice loop ride along Seven Mile Beach which then makes its way in toward Berry and then cuts back to Coolangatta Mountain - designed to ride - did not take the orchid camera as I was not planning to walk. Photo up to Southern Highlands taken midpoint

Saw this tussle of purple in the grass just short of the Beach Road turnoff - too bad I chose not to put the macro camera in - slender hyacinth orchid

And just around the corner on the way up Beach Rd was this hyacinth orchid

Looks like blotched hyacinth orchid to me - dipodium punctatum

Rode up the hill past Harley Hill Cemetery which is quite overgrown - turned left into Agars Lane which passes a land conservancy slice - these hyacinth orchids growling directly along the conservancy. I want to get a key

Zoomed in a little - also looks like dipodium punctatum

Keys to ID - are there stripes on the labellum? Colour of the labellum tufts? Shape of the spots? Pink enough? That all has me at dipodiim punctatum

Not hard to find - growing on the roadside

Was a good loosening up ridde around Christmas busy and I scored two types of orchid growing in 3 new locations. Longest ride for a while.

Headed across one street for Christmas lunch with old time friends - oysters, prawns, ham and salads, Christmas cake and custard - nice chin wag with good simple food. Turned into a stay awake struggle that needed a nap - not often I do that

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Cycling, Daily Activity, Photowalking