Herbert busy inspecting Habenaria trilobulata flowers.
An Austrian orchid photographer, Herbert Stärker visited Mountainlands Nature Reserve today. He is well known for his detailed photos of South African orchids and with 40 years experience has contributed to several publications. This includes “The Cape Orchids” and “South African Orchids” which has more than 2500 images taken by him. His latest interest is photographing the reproductive parts of orchid flowers and he had four orchids on his wish list for Mountainlands. We were lucky to find two in flower, namely Habenaria malacophylla and Habenaria trilobulata – both species growing in shade in forests. The other two did not read the “when to flower” manual for orchids and hopefully he will find them in bloom somewhere else in the province.
