Orchids     

Raupeka or Easter Orchid
 Family: Orchidaceae       Genus:  Earina Autumnalis
The heavily scented "Easter Orchid" flowers in autumn, when it's fragrance may attract the searcher well before the plant is seen. This is an epiphyte, but will grow on rocks or even the ground when the orchid itself falls.  
The stem stands up, if short, but grows to a dropping metre long; it is covered with stiff 4 - 10 cm long, narrow, pointed, sometimes twisted leaves; it ends with the flower stem, turned upward if the stem is long and drooping. The flower stem carries many blooms, which are white and measure 5 mm across.  These are classic orchids in miniature, with broad oval petals and sepals, and a broad yellow based labellum.  Erina Autumnalis is a common orchid.  It flowers on the previous year's spike from February to July, and is prdominantly insect pollinated.

  

Peka-a-waka or Hanging Tree Orchid
 Family: Orchidaceae       Genus:  Earina Mucronata
The most common of New Zealand's perching orchids, Peka-a
-waka is found on trees in many lowland forests, or inn open bush beside tracks.
Each stem carries many tiny flowers on dropping clusters in spring (September to January)

It grows often in huge grassy looking mats, covering well-lit branches and trunks.

The sometimes slightly fragrant flowers are creamy yellow, less than a centimetre across, with oval petals and septals.  The labellum is orange,  broad and lobed at its base and outer end, with a narrow isthmus between.  The leaves are slender and pointed, like stiff grass,  with old dead flower stem sticking up among them. The leaf stems do nit branch. The roots form a thick tangled mass attached to the tree bark.

Earina mucronata is predominantly insect pollinated as the prominent rostellum between the anther and stigma suggests.
   

Bulbophyllum Pygmaeum or Bulb-Leaf Orchid
 Family: Orchidaceae       Genus:  Bulbophyllum pygmaeum
New Zealand has two species of Bulbophyllum. This is the only New Zealand genus with pseudobulb, the swollen leaf-base characteristic of many overseas and cultivated orchids.
The flower is green, 3mm across. It only opens briefly, if at all. Some buddss appear to develop fruit without ever opening
This "Bulb-Leaf Orchid" is tiny, a series of match-head size green pseudobulbs each topped by a single, 1 cm, oval leaf, the whole plant forming a mat on branches and boles of trees (usually found when rimu or other podocarps fall) and on rocks.  The plant is self-pollonating and flowers in the summer.

Bulbophyllum pygmaeum is rare in the south,  more common in the north.  It is found on the treetopsin Canterbury, but lower down in the north, and in the lower South Island there are records only from south Westland. It has been found occasionally on Stewart Island.

This was one of 7 Orchids found by Banks and Solander on Cook's first voyage.  It has been illustrated by Sydney Parkinson. Solander called it Epidendrum pygmaeum. Sheila Natusch made the first discovery of the species on Stewart Island.
©  Wairere Boulders (Nature Park), 
Horeke, Hokainga Harbour, Northland, New Zealand, NZ)