It was earlyish afternoon and we had found what we'd been seeking at Falls Creek within an hour. We had the choice of heading to either a lowland location where we may find some late flowering Utricularia beaugleholei or a detour to visit another alpine mountain, Mt. Buffalo where I knew tht a beautiful deep red late emerging form of Drosera auriculata could be found. We chose Mt. Buffalo as the temps were in the low 40 Cs on at the base of the mountains but a comfortable 27 C on the alps.
We arrived mid afternoon and headed for the spot that I believed we would find te D. auriculata. Unfortunately the car would only take us far far before the end of the road n neither of us could realy be bothered walking and sort fo a distance so we aborted that search. On the way there I had noticed some splashes of purple around the margin of Lake Catani. I was confident that these were patches of U. dichotoma.
I was right.
The inflorescences were very tall compared to the other forms we'd seen the previous day and many more flowers were clustered together. This form appeared very similar to the tuberous form that I had discovered about 10 years ago at a lower altitude. This time I did not think to check for tubers. There was also some variation in flower colour with a pale mauve coloured form quite common.
the pale form
You'll notice there havn't been many close ups of the Utriularia flowers. This was bcause I wasn't keen on laying in water to get th shots. Call me soft.
The final stop at Mt. Buffalo was a small stream that cut under the main road. Alongside the road growing on the rocks were small colony of Drosera gracilis. One of the few chances we'd had to get a clear shot at the plants.
From there, 5 hours later we were home. We'd travelled 1400kms and gone as high as 1800m in altitude. It's amazing what you can get done in less than 2 days.
We didn't find the orchids that we were hoping, but were more that compensated with the amount of CPs we found at a time of year that most would consider the poorest time of year in this part of the world.