Day 11 — Orchids on the “Rock” — Newfoundland — 2013-07-13

Today is mostly a travel day, so this blog entry will necessarily be abbreviated. While we were working our way north, up the west coast of Newfoundland, we had previously visited the area around New Ferolle Lighthouse, where there were dozens of Malaxis brachypoda or White Adder’s-mouth orchid in bud. I had hoped that four days later, some of them would be in bloom.

We arrived at the spot, again shaken by the rough, pot-holed road. It is deceptively smooth and level, but it has very deep and wide pot-holes — some almost reaching from side to side. Anyway, the wind was howling when we pulled in to that grassy pulloff near the lighthouse. While Walter busied himself taking pictures of the nearby lighthouse, I set about trying to find the best of the Malaxis brachypoda that was indeed blooming. Here is the best of the bunch with those tiny, tiny flowers. Keep in mind that the entire plant is about 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) tall:

Those hair-like strands around the flowers are some of the remains of fuzzy seeds from a different type of plant nearby. The seeds are similar to those of a dandelion, in that they use those strands to catch the wind and lift themselves into the air.

Here are a couple more images of the orchid plants in bloom:

Some of the flowers appear to be missing from the plant pictured above. Perhaps it was recently visited by an orchid-munching critter such as a slug, or perhaps the wind played a part in the disappearance…

After about an hour of being battered by the wind, we both decided that we had had enough of this spot. So, we packed up and drove down the coast toward the Port Riche Lighthouse. Walter had wanted to get a better shot of it, since the light was much better on this day. While he was busy with the lighthouse, I wandered the short distance toward the beach and photograhed the waves crashing in on shore:

We finished up here and got back in the vehicle to continue the drive to our final destination for the day, Rocky Harbour. However, before reaching Rocky Harbour, we saw a sign pointing to Arches Provincial Park, so we took another detour, since we had a bit of time before we were to check in to our motel.

The natural arches along the shore are huge! To give you an idea of the size, I took a photograph of a group of people that were already there when we arrived. They were not posing for me, they were posing for another family member who was standing on the steps below me:

Here is another shot of the row of arches along the beach. The arch on the far left had collapsed at some earlier date before we arrived:

Finally, we were done for the day. We packed up and drove the short distance back to the same motel we had used a week earlier. Tomorrow would be a very busy day, with a long drive to Tilt Cove on the east coast of Newfoundland, where we hoped to find Dactylorhiza majalis subsp. praetermissa or Southern Marsh-orchid. And, there were a couple of additional stops along the way…

— Jim