Svelte and ruddy in a tough hood

In Victoria, we are now moving from winter greenhoods (Pterostylis) to early spring spider orchids (Caladenia). Sort of. Neither genus is actually limited to such narrow seasons, with species flowering year round in at least some locations (although you'll struggle in mid-summer to find either genus flowering). But it's a notable transition in the places I visit.

The greenhood I'm featuring today is one of what we might call the autumn greenhoods, Pterostylis rubescens, flowering in May. It's also called Red-tipped Greenhood, and was for sometime confused with the Tiny Greenhood, Pterostylis parviflora.

Like all all its cohorts in this group of small flowered greenhoods, the rosette of leaves is adjacent to the single flowering stalk. 

That flowering stalk can get to about a foot (30 centimetres) high but each flower is only a centimetre long. Given the ruddy colour of the flowers, they are difficult to find in the speckled-brown floor of the goldfields forest around Muckleford, in central Victoria.

The eucalypts here are mostly box and ironbark, the latter with its deeply fissured bark as you can see in this freshly sawn trunk nearby to the orchid, followed by the trunk of one still standing.

The Red-tipped Greenhood is relatively common in this kind of country across hilly country from the Grampians right through to the north-east of Victoria and then into New South Wales and ACT. It also pops up in South Australia.

According to Gary Backhouse, in his book Bush Beauties: the Wild Orchids of Victoria, Australia, this species flowers well only after good autumn rain. Lynda and I only found two or three or them in our meander around Muckleford Forest, but May may have been a little late for this area.

The species was only given a botanical name in 2008 and until then rolled up into the Tiny Greenhood. You can tell them apart by the orange or red markings on the flowers of the Red-tipped Greenhood, or brown hued when younger.

Since then a few additional species have been sliced off but according to Gary there is little to distinguish them other than location. If you are rambling around the Otways and Port Phillip Bay, you might see the Pygmy Greenhood (Pterostylis clivosa) or in the far south-west near Nelson, the name-shaming Chubby Greenhood (Pterostylis corpulenta). There is another unnamed variant in the far east of Victoria with the equally shameful common name of Plump Greenhood.

For anyone not familiar with these plants, the green 'hood' of the flower is a sepal, the outer layer of a flower and usually green in most flowers. The broad lip reaching up at the front with a pointy tip on either side of the hood is two sepals fused together. 

The ruddy bits are petals, as is the tongue that may stick out in some greenhoods (not visible here). There is a rather fancy arrangement of the sexual parts inside this floral chamber. The pollinators are usually midges, gnats and flies.

Some greenhoods will carpet the forest floor, particularly in damp and shady mountainsides. This one ekes out a living on some pretty tough country. 

Made even tougher in these parts by the gold mining of the nineteenth century which turned much of of the substrate upside down. This is the nearby Sandy Creeks Diggings Reserve, retaining those disruptive contours. It's a wonder any orchid survived this upheaval.