Winter donkey orchid flowers during Makuru at Kings Park

July 21, 2026Southwest Australia woodlands

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(Acanthus cladostachyus) is in flower at Kings Park — a single research-grade sighting recorded on July 15 in the Poole Track bushland. The species earns its common name honestly: brumalis means midwinter in Latin, and this orchid blooms only during the coldest, shortest days of the year, timed to a season when almost nothing else flowers.

Its presence in the remnant Swan Coastal Plain scrub depends on far more than cold weather alone. These terrestrial orchids require specific mycorrhizal fungi in the soil to germinate and establish — delicate underground partners that vanish quickly when the understorey is disturbed. The Noongar people mark this time as Makuru, the cold and fertile season, reading the landscape through precisely these kinds of small, specific signals: the tiny orchids, the fungi, the timing. Seeing one here, in a fragment of native bush surrounded by a city, is evidence that enough of the old seasonal machinery is still running.

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