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nora@noraphotos.com (Nora Photos) — Wed, 15 May 2013 12:38:27 GMT

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Wildlife Portfolio

nora@noraphotos.com (Nora Photos) — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 16:16:46 GMT

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Wildlife in Serengeti & Ngorongoro National Parks. East Africa P

nora@noraphotos.com (Nora Photos) — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 15:58:10 GMT

]]>The Serengeti ecosystem is a geographical region in Africa. It is located in north Tanzania and extends to south-western Kenya between. It spans some 30,000 km2 (12,000 sq mi).

The Serengeti hosts the largest mammal migration in the world, which is one of the ten natural travel wonders of the world.
The region contains several national parks and game reserves. Serengeti is derived from the Maasai language, Maa; specifically, "Serengit" meaning "Endless Plains".

Widely recognised as the major wildlife reserve in the world, the Serengeti National Park is, simply put, a vast natural paradise. The park includes, besides the Serengeti National Park, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, the Maswa Game Reserve, the Loliondo, Grumeti and Ikorongo Controlled Areas in Tanzania, and the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya. Actually the second is a more appropriate figure to consider, as there are no fences along the different park borders, and animals can freely move from one to another.

Its extensive grassland plains spotted with acacia trees are home to the largest herds of migrating ungulates and (as an obvious consequence) the highest concentrations of large predators in the world.

Wildlife numbers are impressive. A 1990 study estimated wildebeest population at a sheer 1.6 million, Thomson's gazelle at 440,000, zebra at 250,000, lion at 2,800, hyena at 9,000, leopard at 1,000, and cheetah at 500.

The massive population of hoofed animals, the world's largest in the wild, gives place to one of nature's most imposing events, the Great Wildebeest Migration. Every year the herbivores are forced to follow the rains in their search for water and grazing grassland, a 500km round trip from the Southern Serengeti to the northern edge of the Masai Mara National Reserve. The circular migratory route sees the animals heading North to the Masai Mara grasslands every June, after finishing the mineral-rich pastures of the northern Serengeti plains and woodlands. By October, when the rains leave the Mara for the Serengeti, the migratory animals make the reverse route, heading for the southern Serengeti plains once again.

One of the oldest ecosystems on Earth, the Serengeti has remained almost intact over the past million years. Its plains are mostly crystalline rocks overlain by volcanic ash with numerous granitic rock outcrops, known as kopjes, which are home to rich ecosystems (and where lions usually hide their cubs). In the north and along the western corridor are mountain ranges of mainly volcanic origin. Two rivers flowing west usually contain water and there are a number of lakes, marshes, and waterholes.

The grassland plains are the major type of vegetation, but become almost desert during periods of severe drought. In wetter areas, sedges such as Kyllinga spp. take over. There is an extensive block of acacia woodland savanna in the centre, a more hilly and densely wooded zone covering most of the northern arm of the park, and some gallery forest.

Protected area since 1940, the Serengeti gained national park status in 1951 with extensive boundary modifications in 1959. It was internationally recognised as part of Serengeti-Ngorongoro Biosphere Reserve (with the adjoining Maswa Game Reserve) under UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Programme in 1981 and inscribed on the World Heritage List in the same year.

Study of Swans. London, UK P

nora@noraphotos.com (Nora Photos) — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 15:57:31 GMT

]]>Study of Swans. London, UK 2011 © Nora de Angelli / www.noraphotos.com

Birds. London Parks. UK P

nora@noraphotos.com (Nora Photos) — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 15:55:54 GMT

]]>Birds. London Parks. UK 2011 © Nora de Angelli / www.noraphotos.com

Wildlife in Lake Nakuru National Park, Kenya. East Africa P

nora@noraphotos.com (Nora Photos) — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 15:54:31 GMT

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Lake Nakuru is one of the Rift Valley soda lakes at an elevation of 1754 m above sea level. It lies to the south of Nakuru, in the rift valley of Kenya and is protected by Lake Nakuru National Park.

The lake's abundance of algae attracts the vast quantity of flamingos that famously line the shore. Pollution and drought destroy the flamingos' food, Cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, and causing them to migrate to the nearby Lakes, more recently lakes Elmenteita, Simbi Nyaima and Bogoria. The flamingos feed on algae, created from their droppings mixing in the warm alkaline waters, and plankton. But flamingo are not the only avian attraction, also present are two large fish eating birds, pelicans and cormorants. Other birds also flourish in the area, as do warthogs, baboons and other large mammals. Black and white rhinos have also been introduced.

The lake's level dropped dramatically in the early 1990s but has since largely recovered.
Nakuru means "Dust or Dusty Place" in the Maasai language. Lake Nakuru National Park, close to Nakuru town, was established in 1961. It started off small, only encompassing the famous lake and the surrounding mountainous vicinity, but has since been extended to include a large part of the savannahs.

Lake Nakuru is protected under the Ramsar Convention on wetlands.
Lake Nakuru National Park (188 km², 73mi²) was created in 1961 around Lake Nakuru, near Nakuru Town. It is best known for its thousands, sometimes millions of flamingos nesting along the shores. The surface of the shallow lake is often hardly recognizable due to the continually shifting mass of pink. The number of flamingoes on the lake varies with water and food conditions and the best vantage point is from Baboon Cliff. Also of interest is an area of 188 km (116 mi) around the lake fenced off as a sanctuary to protect Rothschild giraffes, black rhinos and white rhinos.

The park has recently been enlarged partly to provide the sanctuary for the black rhino. This undertaking has necessitated a fence - to keep out poachers rather than to restrict the movement of wildlife. The park marches for 12.1 km on the south eastern boundary with the Soysambu conservancy which represents a possible future expansion of habitat for the rhinos and the only remaining wildlife corridor to Lake Naivasha.

The park now (2009) has more than 25 black rhinoceros, one of the largest concentrations in the country, plus around 70 white rhinos. There are also a number of Rothschild's giraffe, again translocated for safety from western Kenya beginning in 1977. Waterbuck are very common and both the Kenyan species are found here. Among the predators are lion, cheetah and leopard, the latter being seen much more frequently in recent times. The park also has large sized pythons that inhabit the dense woodlands, and can often be seen crossing the roads or dangling from trees.

As well as flamingos, there are myriad other bird species that inhabit the lake and the area surrounding it, such as African fish eagle, goliath heron, hamerkop, pied kingfisher and verreaux eagle. Thousands of both little grebes and white winged are frequently seen as are stilts, avocets, ducks, and in the European winter the migrant waders.

Patagonia, South America. Wildlife P

nora@noraphotos.com (Nora Photos) — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 15:53:43 GMT

]]>Patagonia is a region located in Argentina and Chile, integrating the southernmost section of the Andes mountains to the southwest towards the Pacific ocean and from the east of the cordillera to the valleys it follows south through Colorado River towards Carmen de Patagones in the Atlantic Ocean. To the west, it includes the territory of Valdivia through Tierra del Fuego archipelago.

The name Patagonia comes from the word patagón used by Magellan in 1520 to describe the native people that his expedition thought to be giants. It is now believed the Patagons were actually Tehuelches with an average height of 180 cm compared to the 155 cm average for Spaniards of the time.
The Argentine portion of Patagonia includes the provinces of Neuquén, Río Negro, Chubut and Santa Cruz, as well as the eastern portion of Tierra del Fuego archipelago and the southernmost department of Buenos Aires province: Patagones. The Argentine politico-economic Patagonic Region includes the Province of La Pampa. Patagonia has a Welsh colony.

The Chilean part of Patagonia embraces the southern provinces and regions of Aisén and Magallanes, including the west side of Tierra del Fuego and Cape Horn.

Argentine Patagonia is for the most part a region of steppelike plains, rising in a succession of 13 abrupt terraces about 100 metres (330 ft) at a time, and covered with an enormous bed of shingle almost bare of vegetation. In the hollows of the plains are ponds or lakes of fresh and brackish water. Towards the Andes the shingle gives place to porphyry, granite, and basalt lavas, animal life becomes more abundant and vegetation more luxuriant, acquiring the characteristics of the flora of the western coast, and consisting principally of southern beech and conifers. The high rainfall against the western Andes (Wet Andes) and the low sea surface temperatures offshore give rise to cold and humid air masses, contributing to the ice-fields and glaciers, the largest ice-fields in the Southern hemisphere outside of Antarctica.

HISTORY

Human habitation of the region dates back thousands of years, with some early archaeological findings in the area dated to at least the 13th millennium BC, although later dates of around the 10th millennium BC are more securely recognized. There is evidence of human activity at Monte Verde in Llanquihue Province, Chile dated to around 12,500 BC. The glacial period ice-fields and subsequent large meltwater streams would have made settlement difficult at that time.

The region seems to have been inhabited continuously since 10,000 BC, by various cultures and alternating waves of migration, the details of which are as yet poorly understood. Hearths, stone scrapers, animal remains dated to 9400-9200 BC have been found east of the Andes. The Cueva de las Manos is a famous site in Santa Cruz, Argentina. A cave at the foot of a cliff, it has wall paintings, particularly the negative images of hundreds of hands, believed to date from around 8000 BC.

The indigenous peoples of the region included the Tehuelches, whose numbers and society were reduced to near extinction not long after the first contacts with Europeans. The Tehuelches were mainly a nomad tribe that moved from east to west during the change of the seasons, following their hunting habits. One of the principal camps found by archeologists recently is the site of Monte Verde near Puerto Montt, which dates 14.500 BP. The Tehuelches skillfully hunted deer, pumas and new guanacos during the season, in this way they would sustain their feeding habits all year. They would have their children during this period, in protected areas of the forest and Cordilleras of the Chilean Patagonia and away from the heat of the eastern and western territory.

Around 1000 BC, Mapuche-speaking agriculturalists penetrated the western Andes and from there across into the eastern plains and down to the far south. Through confrontation and technological ability, they came to dominate the other peoples of the region in a short period of time, and are the principal indigenous community today. The Tehuelche model of domination through technological superiority and armed confrontation was later repeated as Europeans implemented a succeeding but conceptually identical cycle, essentially replacing the position of the former dominators with a new, albeit predominately European class.

Early European exploration and Spanish conquest attempts (1520-1584)

The region of Patagonia was first mentioned in European accounts in 1520 by the expedition of Ferdinand Magellan, who on his passage along the coast named many of the more striking features – Gulf of San Matias, Cape of 11,000 Virgins (now simply Cape Virgenes), and others. However, it is also possible that earlier navigators such as Amerigo Vespucci had reached the area (his own account of 1502 has it that he reached its latitudes), however his failure to accurately describe the main geographical features of the region such as the Río de la Plata casts some doubt on whether he really did so.

The first European explorers of Patagonia observed that the indigenous people in the region were taller than the average Europeans of the time, prompting some of them to believe that Patagonians were giants. According to Antonio Pigafetta, one of the Magellan expedition's few survivors and its published chronicler, Magellan bestowed the name "Patagão" (or Patagón) on the inhabitants they encountered there, and the name "Patagonia" for the region.

However, the Patagonian giant frenzy was to die down substantially only a few years later, when some more sober and analytical accounts were published. In 1773 John Hawkesworth published on behalf of the Admiralty a compendium of noted English southern-hemisphere explorers' journals, including that of James Cook and John Byron. In this publication, drawn from their official logs, it became clear that the people Byron's expedition had encountered were no taller than 6-foot-6-inch (1.98 m), very high but by no means giants. Interest soon subsided, although awareness of and belief in the myth persisted in some quarters even up into the 20th century.

Two hydrographic surveys of the coasts were of first-rate importance: the first expedition (1826–1830) including HMS Adventure and HMS Beagle under Phillip Parker King, and the second (1832–1836) being the voyage of the Beagle under Robert FitzRoy. The latter expedition is particularly noted for the participation of Charles Darwin who spent considerable time investigating various areas of Patagonia onshore, including long rides with gauchos in Río Negro, and who joined FitzRoy in a 200 miles (320 km) expedition taking ships boats up the course of the Santa Cruz river.

Until 1902, a large proportion of Patagonia's population were natives of Chiloé Archipelago (Chilotes) who worked as peons in large livestock farming estancias. As manual labour they had status below the gauchos and the Argentine, Chilean and European landowners and administrators.

Tibet Landscapes. Central Asia P

nora@noraphotos.com (Nora Photos) — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 09:29:08 GMT

]]>Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people. Tibet is the highest region on earth, with an average elevation of 4,900 metres (16,000 ft).

All of modern China, including Tibet, is considered a part of East Asia. Historically, some European sources also considered parts of Tibet to lie in Central Asia. Tibet is west of the Central China plain, and within mainland China, Tibet is regarded as "the Western section", meaning "Western China".
Tibet has some of the world's tallest mountains, with several of them making the top ten list. Mount Everest, at 8,848 metres (29,029 ft), is the highest mountain on earth, located on the border with Nepal. Several major rivers have their source in the Tibetan Plateau (mostly in present-day Qinghai Province). These include Yangtze, Yellow River, Indus River, Mekong, Ganges, Salween and the Yarlung Zangbo River (Brahmaputra River). The Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon, along the Yarlung Zangbo River, is among the deepest and longest canyons in the world.

The Indus and Brahmaputra rivers originate from a lake (Tib: Tso Mapham) in Western Tibet, near Mount Kailash. The mountain is a holy pilgrimage site for both Hindus and Tibetans. The Hindus consider the mountain to be the abode of Lord Shiva. The Tibetan name for Mt. Kailash is Khang Rinpoche. Tibet has numerous high-altitude lakes referred to in Tibetan as tso or co. These include Qinghai Lake, Lake Manasarovar, Namtso, Pangong Tso, Yamdrok Lake, Siling Co, Lhamo La-tso, Lumajangdong Co, Lake Puma Yumco, Lake Paiku, Lake Rakshastal, Dagze Co and Dong Co. The Qinghai Lake (Koko Nor) is the largest lake in the People's Republic of China.
Humans inhabited the Tibetan Plateau at least 21,000 years ago. This population was largely replaced around 3,000 BP by Neolithic immigrants from northern China. However there is a "partial genetic continuity between the Paleolithic inhabitants and the contemporary Tibetan populations".
The earliest Tibetan historical texts identify the Zhang Zhung culture as a people who migrated from the Amdo region into what is now the region of Guge in western Tibet. Zhang Zhung is considered to be the original home of the Bön religion. By the 1st century BCE, a neighboring kingdom arose in the Yarlung valley, and the Yarlung king, Drigum Tsenpo, attempted to remove the influence of the Zhang Zhung by expelling the Zhang's Bön priests from Yarlung. He was assassinated and Zhang Zhung continued its dominance of the region until it was annexed by Songtsen Gampo in the 7th century.
Prior to Songtsän Gampo, the kings of Tibet were more mythological than factual, and there is insufficient evidence of their existence.
Tibet emerged in the 7th century as a unified empire, but it soon divided into a variety of territories. The bulk of western and central Tibet were often at least nominally unified under a series of Tibetan governments in Lhasa, Shigatse, or nearby locations; these governments were at various times under Mongol and Chinese overlordship.

The first Europeans to arrive in Tibet were the Portuguese missionaries António de Andrade and Manuel Marques in 1624. They were welcomed by the King and Queen of Guge, and were allowed to build a church and to introduce Christian belief. The king of Guge eagerly accepted Christianity as an offsetting religious influence to dilute the thriving Gelugpa and to counterbalance his potential rivals and consolidate his position. All missionaries were expelled in 1745.
Emerging with control over most of mainland China after the Chinese Civil War, the People's Republic of China incorporated Tibet in 1950 and negotiated the Seventeen Point Agreement with the newly crowned 14th Dalai Lama's government, affirming the People's Republic of China's sovereignty but granting the area autonomy. After the Dalai Lama government fled to Dharamsala, India during the 1959 Tibetan Rebellion, it established a rival government-in-exile. Afterwards, the Central People's Government in Beijing renounced the agreement and began implementation of the halted social and political reforms. During the Great Leap Forward between 200 thousand and 1 million Tibetans died, and approximately 6,000 monasteries were destroyed around the Cultural Revolution. In 1962 China and India fought a brief war over the disputed South Tibet and Aksai Chin regions. Although China won the war, Chinese troops withdrew north of the McMahon Line, effectively ceding South Tibet back to India.
In 1980, General Secretary and reformist Hu Yaobang visited Tibet, and ushered in a period of social, political, and economic liberalization. At the end of the decade, however analogously to the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, monks in the Drepung and Sera monasteries started protesting for independence, and so the government halted reforms and started an anti-separatist campaign. Human rights organisations have been critical of the Beijing and Lhasa governments' approach to human rights in the region when cracking down on separatist convulsions that have occurred around monasteries and cities, most recently in the 2008 Tibetan unrest.
Linguists generally classify the Tibetan language as a Tibeto-Burman language of the Sino-Tibetan language family although the boundaries between 'Tibetan' and certain other Himalayan languages can be unclear.

Petra, Little Petra, Wadi Rum. Jordan Stock (complete story)

nora@noraphotos.com (Nora Photos) — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 09:24:47 GMT

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Petra was first established sometime around the 6th century BC, by the Nabataean Arabs, a nomadic tribe who settled in the area and laid the foundations of a commercial empire that extended into Syria.

Evidence suggests that settlements had begun in and around Petra in the eighteenth dynasty of Egypt (1550-1292 BC). It is listed in Egyptian campaign accounts and the Amarna letters as Pel, Sela or Seir. Though the city was founded relatively late, a sanctuary existed there since very ancient times. This part of the country was Biblically assigned to the Horites, the predecessors of the Edomites. Although Petra is usually identified with Sela which means a rock, the Biblical references refer to it as "the cleft in the rock", referring to its entrance. The second book of Kings xiv. 7 seems to be more specific. On the authority of Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews iv. 7, 1~ 4, 7) Eusebius and Jerome (Onom. sacr. 286, 71. 145, 9; 228, 55. 287, 94) assert that Rekem was the native name and Rekem appears in the Dead Sea Scrolls as a prominent Edom site most closely describing Petra and associated with Mount Seir.

Petra, a vast city carved into the sheer rock face, was turned it into an important junction for the silk, spice, frankincense and other trade routes that linked China, India and southern Arabia with Egypt, Syria, Greece and Rome. According to the Old Testament, a battle took place from the heights of the tallest mountain in Petra, Umm al Biyara. Another cliff top, said to be the burial site of Aaron (Haroun in Arabic), the brother of Moses, has been a holy place for Christian monks and now Muslims.
Despite successive attempts by the Seleucid king Antigonus, the Roman emperor Pompey and Herod the Great to bring Petra under the control of their respective empires, Petra remained largely in Nabataean hands until around 100AD, when the Romans took over. It was still inhabited during the Byzantine period, when the former Roman Empire moved its focus east to Constantinople, but declined in importance thereafter.

The Crusaders constructed a fort there in the 12th century, but soon withdrew, leaving Petra, ‘The Lost City’, to the local bedouins until the early 19th century, when it was rediscovered by the Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt in 1812.
In October, 1917, Lawrence, as part of a general effort to divert Turkish military resources away from the British invasion of North Africa, led a small force of Syrians and Arabians in defending Petra against a much larger combined force of Turks and Germans. The Bedouin women living in the vicinity of Petra and under the leadership of Sheik Khallil's wife were recruited to fight in the defense of the city. The defenders were able to completely devastate the Turkish/German forces.

The Bedul Bedouin inhabit the region around Petra which achieved a "World Heritage" status by UNESCO in 1985.

Entrance to the city is through the Siq, a narrow gorge, over 1km in length, which is flanked on either side by soaring, 80m high cliffs. The rose-red colours and formations of the rocks are dazzling.

The Al-Khazneh (The Treasury), a massive façade, 30m wide and 43m high, carved out of the sheer, dusky pink rock-face and dwarfing everything around it, is found at the end of the Siq. It was carved in the early 1st century as the tomb of an important Nabataean king and represents the engineering genius of these ancient people.

T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) wrote: "...so you will never know what Petra is like, unless you come out here. Only be assured that till you have seen it you have not had the glimmering of an idea how beautiful a place can be."

Petra, Little Petra, Wadi Rum. Jordan (complete story) P

nora@noraphotos.com (Nora Photos) — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 09:24:22 GMT

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Petra was first established sometime around the 6th century BC, by the Nabataean Arabs, a nomadic tribe who settled in the area and laid the foundations of a commercial empire that extended into Syria.

Evidence suggests that settlements had begun in and around Petra in the eighteenth dynasty of Egypt (1550-1292 BC). It is listed in Egyptian campaign accounts and the Amarna letters as Pel, Sela or Seir. Though the city was founded relatively late, a sanctuary existed there since very ancient times. This part of the country was Biblically assigned to the Horites, the predecessors of the Edomites. Although Petra is usually identified with Sela which means a rock, the Biblical references refer to it as "the cleft in the rock", referring to its entrance. The second book of Kings xiv. 7 seems to be more specific. On the authority of Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews iv. 7, 1~ 4, 7) Eusebius and Jerome (Onom. sacr. 286, 71. 145, 9; 228, 55. 287, 94) assert that Rekem was the native name and Rekem appears in the Dead Sea Scrolls as a prominent Edom site most closely describing Petra and associated with Mount Seir.

Petra, a vast city carved into the sheer rock face, was turned it into an important junction for the silk, spice, frankincense and other trade routes that linked China, India and southern Arabia with Egypt, Syria, Greece and Rome. According to the Old Testament, a battle took place from the heights of the tallest mountain in Petra, Umm al Biyara. Another cliff top, said to be the burial site of Aaron (Haroun in Arabic), the brother of Moses, has been a holy place for Christian monks and now Muslims.
Despite successive attempts by the Seleucid king Antigonus, the Roman emperor Pompey and Herod the Great to bring Petra under the control of their respective empires, Petra remained largely in Nabataean hands until around 100AD, when the Romans took over. It was still inhabited during the Byzantine period, when the former Roman Empire moved its focus east to Constantinople, but declined in importance thereafter.

The Crusaders constructed a fort there in the 12th century, but soon withdrew, leaving Petra, ‘The Lost City’, to the local bedouins until the early 19th century, when it was rediscovered by the Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt in 1812.
In October, 1917, Lawrence, as part of a general effort to divert Turkish military resources away from the British invasion of North Africa, led a small force of Syrians and Arabians in defending Petra against a much larger combined force of Turks and Germans. The Bedouin women living in the vicinity of Petra and under the leadership of Sheik Khallil's wife were recruited to fight in the defense of the city. The defenders were able to completely devastate the Turkish/German forces.

The Bedul Bedouin inhabit the region around Petra which achieved a "World Heritage" status by UNESCO in 1985.

Entrance to the city is through the Siq, a narrow gorge, over 1km in length, which is flanked on either side by soaring, 80m high cliffs. The rose-red colours and formations of the rocks are dazzling. The Al-Khazneh (The Treasury), a massive façade, 30m wide and 43m high, carved out of the sheer, dusky pink rock-face and dwarfing everything around it, is found at the end of the Siq. It was carved in the early 1st century as the tomb of an important Nabataean king and represents the engineering genius of these ancient people.

T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) wrote: "...so you will never know what Petra is like, unless you come out here. Only be assured that till you have seen it you have not had the glimmering of an idea how beautiful a place can be."

Tibet. Central Asia P (complete story)

nora@noraphotos.com (Nora Photos) — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 09:22:30 GMT

]]>
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people.

Tibet is the highest region on earth, with an average elevation of 4,900 metres (16,000 ft).
All of modern China, including Tibet, is considered a part of East Asia. Historically, some European sources also considered parts of Tibet to lie in Central Asia. Tibet is west of the Central China plain, and within mainland China, Tibet is regarded as "the Western section", meaning "Western China".
Tibet has some of the world's tallest mountains, with several of them making the top ten list.
Mount Everest, at 8,848 metres (29,029 ft), is the highest mountain on earth, located on the border with Nepal. Several major rivers have their source in the Tibetan Plateau (mostly in present-day Qinghai Province). These include Yangtze, Yellow River, Indus River, Mekong, Ganges, Salween and the Yarlung Zangbo River (Brahmaputra River). The Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon, along the Yarlung Zangbo River, is among the deepest and longest canyons in the world.

The Indus and Brahmaputra rivers originate from a lake (Tib: Tso Mapham) in Western Tibet, near Mount Kailash. The mountain is a holy pilgrimage site for both Hindus and Tibetans. The Hindus consider the mountain to be the abode of Lord Shiva. The Tibetan name for Mt. Kailash is Khang Rinpoche. Tibet has numerous high-altitude lakes referred to in Tibetan as tso or co. These include Qinghai Lake, Lake Manasarovar, Namtso, Pangong Tso, Yamdrok Lake, Siling Co, Lhamo La-tso, Lumajangdong Co, Lake Puma Yumco, Lake Paiku, Lake Rakshastal, Dagze Co and Dong Co. The Qinghai Lake (Koko Nor) is the largest lake in the People's Republic of China.
Humans inhabited the Tibetan Plateau at least 21,000 years ago. This population was largely replaced around 3,000 BP by Neolithic immigrants from northern China. However there is a "partial genetic continuity between the Paleolithic inhabitants and the contemporary Tibetan populations".

The earliest Tibetan historical texts identify the Zhang Zhung culture as a people who migrated from the Amdo region into what is now the region of Guge in western Tibet. Zhang Zhung is considered to be the original home of the Bön religion. By the 1st century BCE, a neighboring kingdom arose in the Yarlung valley, and the Yarlung king, Drigum Tsenpo, attempted to remove the influence of the Zhang Zhung by expelling the Zhang's Bön priests from Yarlung. He was assassinated and Zhang Zhung continued its dominance of the region until it was annexed by Songtsen Gampo in the 7th century.
Prior to Songtsän Gampo, the kings of Tibet were more mythological than factual, and there is insufficient evidence of their existence.
Tibet emerged in the 7th century as a unified empire, but it soon divided into a variety of territories. The bulk of western and central Tibet were often at least nominally unified under a series of Tibetan governments in Lhasa, Shigatse, or nearby locations; these governments were at various times under Mongol and Chinese overlordship.

The first Europeans to arrive in Tibet were the Portuguese missionaries António de Andrade and Manuel Marques in 1624. They were welcomed by the King and Queen of Guge, and were allowed to build a church and to introduce Christian belief. The king of Guge eagerly accepted Christianity as an offsetting religious influence to dilute the thriving Gelugpa and to counterbalance his potential rivals and consolidate his position. All missionaries were expelled in 1745.

Emerging with control over most of mainland China after the Chinese Civil War, the People's Republic of China incorporated Tibet in 1950 and negotiated the Seventeen Point Agreement with the newly crowned 14th Dalai Lama's government, affirming the People's Republic of China's sovereignty but granting the area autonomy. After the Dalai Lama government fled to Dharamsala, India during the 1959 Tibetan Rebellion, it established a rival government-in-exile. Afterwards, the Central People's Government in Beijing renounced the agreement and began implementation of the halted social and political reforms. During the Great Leap Forward between 200 thousand and 1 million Tibetans died, and approximately 6,000 monasteries were destroyed around the Cultural Revolution. In 1962 China and India fought a brief war over the disputed South Tibet and Aksai Chin regions. Although China won the war, Chinese troops withdrew north of the McMahon Line, effectively ceding South Tibet back to India.

In 1980, General Secretary and reformist Hu Yaobang visited Tibet, and ushered in a period of social, political, and economic liberalization. At the end of the decade, however analogously to the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, monks in the Drepung and Sera monasteries started protesting for independence, and so the government halted reforms and started an anti-separatist campaign. Human rights organisations have been critical of the Beijing and Lhasa governments' approach to human rights in the region when cracking down on separatist convulsions that have occurred around monasteries and cities, most recently in the 2008 Tibetan unrest.
Linguists generally classify the Tibetan language as a Tibeto-Burman language of the Sino-Tibetan language family although the boundaries between 'Tibetan' and certain other Himalayan languages can be unclear.

Tibet. Central Asia Stock (complete story)

nora@noraphotos.com (Nora Photos) — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 09:22:06 GMT

]]>Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people. Tibet is the highest region on earth, with an average elevation of 4,900 metres (16,000 ft).
All of modern China, including Tibet, is considered a part of East Asia. Historically, some European sources also considered parts of Tibet to lie in Central Asia. Tibet is west of the Central China plain, and within mainland China, Tibet is regarded as "the Western section", meaning "Western China".

Tibet has some of the world's tallest mountains, with several of them making the top ten list. Mount Everest, at 8,848 metres (29,029 ft), is the highest mountain on earth, located on the border with Nepal. Several major rivers have their source in the Tibetan Plateau (mostly in present-day Qinghai Province). These include Yangtze, Yellow River, Indus River, Mekong, Ganges, Salween and the Yarlung Zangbo River (Brahmaputra River). The Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon, along the Yarlung Zangbo River, is among the deepest and longest canyons in the world.
The Indus and Brahmaputra rivers originate from a lake (Tib: Tso Mapham) in Western Tibet, near Mount Kailash. The mountain is a holy pilgrimage site for both Hindus and Tibetans. The Hindus consider the mountain to be the abode of Lord Shiva. The Tibetan name for Mt. Kailash is Khang Rinpoche. Tibet has numerous high-altitude lakes referred to in Tibetan as tso or co. These include Qinghai Lake, Lake Manasarovar, Namtso, Pangong Tso, Yamdrok Lake, Siling Co, Lhamo La-tso, Lumajangdong Co, Lake Puma Yumco, Lake Paiku, Lake Rakshastal, Dagze Co and Dong Co. The Qinghai Lake (Koko Nor) is the largest lake in the People's Republic of China.

Humans inhabited the Tibetan Plateau at least 21,000 years ago. This population was largely replaced around 3,000 BP by Neolithic immigrants from northern China. However there is a "partial genetic continuity between the Paleolithic inhabitants and the contemporary Tibetan populations".
The earliest Tibetan historical texts identify the Zhang Zhung culture as a people who migrated from the Amdo region into what is now the region of Guge in western Tibet. Zhang Zhung is considered to be the original home of the Bön religion. By the 1st century BCE, a neighboring kingdom arose in the Yarlung valley, and the Yarlung king, Drigum Tsenpo, attempted to remove the influence of the Zhang Zhung by expelling the Zhang's Bön priests from Yarlung. He was assassinated and Zhang Zhung continued its dominance of the region until it was annexed by Songtsen Gampo in the 7th century.

Prior to Songtsän Gampo, the kings of Tibet were more mythological than factual, and there is insufficient evidence of their existence.
Tibet emerged in the 7th century as a unified empire, but it soon divided into a variety of territories. The bulk of western and central Tibet were often at least nominally unified under a series of Tibetan governments in Lhasa, Shigatse, or nearby locations; these governments were at various times under Mongol and Chinese overlordship.
The first Europeans to arrive in Tibet were the Portuguese missionaries António de Andrade and Manuel Marques in 1624. They were welcomed by the King and Queen of Guge, and were allowed to build a church and to introduce Christian belief. The king of Guge eagerly accepted Christianity as an offsetting religious influence to dilute the thriving Gelugpa and to counterbalance his potential rivals and consolidate his position. All missionaries were expelled in 1745.

Emerging with control over most of mainland China after the Chinese Civil War, the People's Republic of China incorporated Tibet in 1950 and negotiated the Seventeen Point Agreement with the newly crowned 14th Dalai Lama's government, affirming the People's Republic of China's sovereignty but granting the area autonomy. After the Dalai Lama government fled to Dharamsala, India during the 1959 Tibetan Rebellion, it established a rival government-in-exile. Afterwards, the Central People's Government in Beijing renounced the agreement and began implementation of the halted social and political reforms. During the Great Leap Forward between 200 thousand and 1 million Tibetans died, and approximately 6,000 monasteries were destroyed around the Cultural Revolution. In 1962 China and India fought a brief war over the disputed South Tibet and Aksai Chin regions. Although China won the war, Chinese troops withdrew north of the McMahon Line, effectively ceding South Tibet back to India.

In 1980, General Secretary and reformist Hu Yaobang visited Tibet, and ushered in a period of social, political, and economic liberalization. At the end of the decade, however analogously to the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, monks in the Drepung and Sera monasteries started protesting for independence, and so the government halted reforms and started an anti-separatist campaign. Human rights organisations have been critical of the Beijing and Lhasa governments' approach to human rights in the region when cracking down on separatist convulsions that have occurred around monasteries and cities, most recently in the 2008 Tibetan unrest.
Linguists generally classify the Tibetan language as a Tibeto-Burman language of the Sino-Tibetan language family although the boundaries between 'Tibetan' and certain other Himalayan languages can be unclear.

Chilean Patagonia, South America. Landscapes Stock

nora@noraphotos.com (Nora Photos) — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 09:21:00 GMT

Chilean Patagonia, South America P (complete story)

nora@noraphotos.com (Nora Photos) — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 09:20:29 GMT

]]>Patagonia is a region located in Argentina and Chile, integrating the southernmost section of the Andes mountains to the southwest towards the Pacific ocean and from the east of the cordillera to the valleys it follows south through Colorado River towards Carmen de Patagones in the Atlantic Ocean. To the west, it includes the territory of Valdivia through Tierra del Fuego archipelago.

The name Patagonia comes from the word patagón used by Magellan in 1520 to describe the native people that his expedition thought to be giants. It is now believed the Patagons were actually Tehuelches with an average height of 180 cm compared to the 155 cm average for Spaniards of the time.
The Argentine portion of Patagonia includes the provinces of Neuquén, Río Negro, Chubut and Santa Cruz, as well as the eastern portion of Tierra del Fuego archipelago and the southernmost department of Buenos Aires province: Patagones. The Argentine politico-economic Patagonic Region includes the Province of La Pampa. Patagonia has a Welsh colony.

The Chilean part of Patagonia embraces the southern provinces and regions of Aisén and Magallanes, including the west side of Tierra del Fuego and Cape Horn.

Argentine Patagonia is for the most part a region of steppelike plains, rising in a succession of 13 abrupt terraces about 100 metres (330 ft) at a time, and covered with an enormous bed of shingle almost bare of vegetation. In the hollows of the plains are ponds or lakes of fresh and brackish water. Towards the Andes the shingle gives place to porphyry, granite, and basalt lavas, animal life becomes more abundant and vegetation more luxuriant, acquiring the characteristics of the flora of the western coast, and consisting principally of southern beech and conifers. The high rainfall against the western Andes (Wet Andes) and the low sea surface temperatures offshore give rise to cold and humid air masses, contributing to the ice-fields and glaciers, the largest ice-fields in the Southern hemisphere outside of Antarctica.

HISTORY

Human habitation of the region dates back thousands of years, with some early archaeological findings in the area dated to at least the 13th millennium BC, although later dates of around the 10th millennium BC are more securely recognized. There is evidence of human activity at Monte Verde in Llanquihue Province, Chile dated to around 12,500 BC. The glacial period ice-fields and subsequent large meltwater streams would have made settlement difficult at that time.

The region seems to have been inhabited continuously since 10,000 BC, by various cultures and alternating waves of migration, the details of which are as yet poorly understood. Hearths, stone scrapers, animal remains dated to 9400-9200 BC have been found east of the Andes. The Cueva de las Manos is a famous site in Santa Cruz, Argentina. A cave at the foot of a cliff, it has wall paintings, particularly the negative images of hundreds of hands, believed to date from around 8000 BC.

The indigenous peoples of the region included the Tehuelches, whose numbers and society were reduced to near extinction not long after the first contacts with Europeans. The Tehuelches were mainly a nomad tribe that moved from east to west during the change of the seasons, following their hunting habits. One of the principal camps found by archeologists recently is the site of Monte Verde near Puerto Montt, which dates 14.500 BP. The Tehuelches skillfully hunted deer, pumas and new guanacos during the season, in this way they would sustain their feeding habits all year. They would have their children during this period, in protected areas of the forest and Cordilleras of the Chilean Patagonia and away from the heat of the eastern and western territory.

Around 1000 BC, Mapuche-speaking agriculturalists penetrated the western Andes and from there across into the eastern plains and down to the far south. Through confrontation and technological ability, they came to dominate the other peoples of the region in a short period of time, and are the principal indigenous community today. The Tehuelche model of domination through technological superiority and armed confrontation was later repeated as Europeans implemented a succeeding but conceptually identical cycle, essentially replacing the position of the former dominators with a new, albeit predominately European class.

Early European exploration and Spanish conquest attempts (1520-1584)

The region of Patagonia was first mentioned in European accounts in 1520 by the expedition of Ferdinand Magellan, who on his passage along the coast named many of the more striking features – Gulf of San Matias, Cape of 11,000 Virgins (now simply Cape Virgenes), and others. However, it is also possible that earlier navigators such as Amerigo Vespucci had reached the area (his own account of 1502 has it that he reached its latitudes), however his failure to accurately describe the main geographical features of the region such as the Río de la Plata casts some doubt on whether he really did so.

The first European explorers of Patagonia observed that the indigenous people in the region were taller than the average Europeans of the time, prompting some of them to believe that Patagonians were giants. According to Antonio Pigafetta, one of the Magellan expedition's few survivors and its published chronicler, Magellan bestowed the name "Patagão" (or Patagón) on the inhabitants they encountered there, and the name "Patagonia" for the region.

However, the Patagonian giant frenzy was to die down substantially only a few years later, when some more sober and analytical accounts were published. In 1773 John Hawkesworth published on behalf of the Admiralty a compendium of noted English southern-hemisphere explorers' journals, including that of James Cook and John Byron. In this publication, drawn from their official logs, it became clear that the people Byron's expedition had encountered were no taller than 6-foot-6-inch (1.98 m), very high but by no means giants. Interest soon subsided, although awareness of and belief in the myth persisted in some quarters even up into the 20th century.

Two hydrographic surveys of the coasts were of first-rate importance: the first expedition (1826–1830) including HMS Adventure and HMS Beagle under Phillip Parker King, and the second (1832–1836) being the voyage of the Beagle under Robert FitzRoy. The latter expedition is particularly noted for the participation of Charles Darwin who spent considerable time investigating various areas of Patagonia onshore, including long rides with gauchos in Río Negro, and who joined FitzRoy in a 200 miles (320 km) expedition taking ships boats up the course of the Santa Cruz river.

Until 1902, a large proportion of Patagonia's population were natives of Chiloé Archipelago (Chilotes) who worked as peons in large livestock farming estancias. As manual labour they had status below the gauchos and the Argentine, Chilean and European landowners and administrators.

Alpine Wild Orchids. Romania Stock

nora@noraphotos.com (Nora Photos) — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 10:49:06 GMT

]]>These are species of Orchids found in the Bucegi Mountains (the Carpathian Mountains), Sinaia, Romania. They have been photographed by myself and Dan Anghelescu, my beloved father.

Evolution
A study in the scientific journal Nature has hypothesized that the origin of orchids goes back much longer than originally expected. Some extinct species of orchids were found trapped in Miocene amber from about 15-20 million years ago.
This indicates orchids may have arisen 76 to 84 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous. In other words, they may have coexisted with dinosaurs. It also shows insects were active pollinators of orchids then. According to Chase et al. (2001), the overall biogeography and phylogenetic patterns of Orchidaceae show they are even older and may go back roughly 100 million years.
Around 7000 to 4000 BC, humans created the habitat for many species of Orchids and allowed them to spread to the north, by settling and converting wild shrub areas into fertile pastures.

Etymology
The Orchis genus gets its name from the Ancient Greek word‘orchis’, meaning "testicle", referring to appearance of the two globular root tubers, tuberoids, which led to orchid root being used as aphrodisiacs since ancient times.

The scientific binomial name of most of the Orchid species were initially proposed by the Swedish naturalist and botanist Carl von Linné (1707–1778) in 1753-59, in his famous opus “Species Plantarum”, first edition.

The names have been subsequently amended to the ones currently accepted by the British botanist Robert Brown (1773 - 1858) in 1813.

Worldwide distribution
They have been reported from Japan, Mongolia, Russia, Turkey, to the east of Siberia, the Chinese Himalayas, to the Himalayas of the east, Nepal, Pakistan, the west of the Himalayas, Bhután, Myanmar, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, The United Kingdom, and France.

Habitat & Ecology
It is found growing in the cool alpine meadows at elevation up to 3000 meters.
A majority of orchids are perennial epiphytes, which grow anchored to trees or shrubs in the tropics and subtropics. Some species are lithophytes, growing on rocks or very rocky soil. Other orchids, including the majority of temperate Orchidaceae – Europe, are terrestrial and can be found in habitat areas such as grasslands or forest.

Symbiosis
Epipogium aphyllum (‘The Spurred Coral-Root’, ‘The Ghost Orchid’) and Neottia nidus-avis (‘The Bird's-Nest Orchid’) are non-photosynthetic orchid.

Once thought to be saprophytic, Epipogium aphyllum and Neottia nidus-avis are actually mycoheterotrophs (or epiparasites) obtaining their nutrients from mycorrhizal networks involvingbasidiomycetes mushroom species that are in turn associated with the roots of various species of coniferous trees, a process known as mycotrophic nutrition. The mycorrhizal fungi derive their nutrients from the decaying leaves of the woodland humus.

They grow from an underground, burrowing stem, which lacks chlorophyll and possesses ephemeral leaves that are small scales.

Flowering Time
Depending on location, Orchis militaris (‘The Military Orchid’)flowers from March to June. Most of them are in full flower in May.
Spiranthes spiralis (‘Autumn Lady's-Tresses’, ‘The Twisting Flower’) blooms in August and September.

Reproduction
The flowers are believed to mimic the colours and pheromones of certain bees to attract them.
The flowers are hermaphrodite (have both male and female organs) and entomogamous, pollinated by various insects, including moths, a phenomenon known as entomophily.
The mechanism by which its pairs of pollinia attach themselves to an insect's proboscis was discovered by the English naturalistCharles Darwin (1809-1882) and described in his book on the‘Fertilisation of Orchids’ (1862).
Sometimes autogamous reproduction occurs, (or ‘self-pollination’: it does not need the insect as it may self-pollinate - the pollinia crumble and some pollen falls on the stigma, fertilizing the flower), as the flowers often fail to open entirely.
Interestingly they have often been found to hybridize with other species of orchids.

Propagation
When fecundated, orchid flowers produce a fruit on which develop thousands of very small seeds like grains, devoid of reserves.

Seeds are numerous and tiny, wind dispersed, the majority falling in the close vicinity of the mother plant.
However the seeds germination is conditioned by the presence of specific fungi.
As characteristic of all orchids, species are dependent on amycorrhizal symbiosis. This allows some species to have reduced leaves and need little chlorophyll. Roots rely on mycorrhizafungus to grow.

Threats & Conservation
All orchids are included under Annex B of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
Measures to be taken in order to regenerate this endangered species could be: protection of the living individuals through legislation, protection from ploughing, agriculture and trampling, artificial propagation, re-introduction, seed collections, and monitoring and surveillance of the existing populations and sites.

Edible Uses
Edible Parts: Root and tuber
Edible Uses: Tuber – cooked
Salep is very nutritive and demulcent, for which properties it has been used from time immemorial.
For many centuries starch has been extracted from the tubers of various kinds of Orchis and exported under the name of Sahlep(an Arabian word, corrupted into English as Saloop or Salep). It was used, especially in the Middle and Far East, for making a wholesome and nutritious drink of the same name. It contains anutritious starch-like polysaccharide called glucomannan.
Before coffee supplanted it, it was sold at stalls in the streets of London. The best English Salep came from Oxfordshire, but the tubers were chiefly imported from the East. Charles Lamb refers to a 'Salopian shop' in Fleet Street, and says that to many tastes it has 'a delicacy beyond the China luxury,' - (tea) and adds that: 'a basin of it at three-halfpence, accompanied by a slice of bread-and-butter at a halfpenny, is an ideal breakfast for a chimney-sweep. '

Medicinal Uses
Salep was held in great repute in herbal medicine, being largely employed as a strengthening medicine with soothing properties.
To allay irritation of the gastro-intestinal canal is used by shaking 1 part of powdered Salep with 10 parts of cold water, until it is uniformly diffused. After that, 90 parts of boiling water or milk are added and the whole well agitated. A decoction flavored with sugar and spice, or wine, is an agreeable drink for invalids. Sassafras chips were sometimes added, or cloves, cinnamon and ginger.
Salep cures worms in children. It heals the 'kings evil' or Scrofula (Scrophula or Struma), which refers to a variety of skin diseases; in particular, cures a form of tuberculosis, affecting the lymph nodes of the neck.

Cultivation details
Plants prefer well-drained low-fertility soils and areas with partial shade. This species is cool to intermediate growing.
Easily grown on a good loamy soil. Requires a deep rich soil and also prefers a chalky soil. Orchids are, in general, shallow-rooting plants of well drained low fertility soils. Their symbiotic relationship with a fungus in the soil allows them to obtain sufficient nutrients and be able to compete successfully with other plants.
They are very sensitive to the addition of fertilizers or fungicidessince these can harm the symbiotic fungus and thus kill the orchid. This symbiotic relationship makes them very difficult to cultivate, though they will sometimes appear uninvited in a garden and will then thrive. Transplanting can damage the plant.

Alpine Wild Orchids. Romania

nora@noraphotos.com (Nora Photos) — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 17:54:03 GMT

]]>These are species of Orchids found in the Bucegi Mountains (the Carpathian Mountains), Sinaia, Romania. They have been photographed by myself and Dan Anghelescu, my beloved father.

Evolution
A study in the scientific journal Nature has hypothesized that the origin of orchids goes back much longer than originally expected. Some extinct species of orchids were found trapped in Miocene amber from about 15-20 million years ago.
This indicates orchids may have arisen 76 to 84 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous. In other words, they may have coexisted with dinosaurs. It also shows insects were active pollinators of orchids then. According to Chase et al. (2001), the overall biogeography and phylogenetic patterns of Orchidaceae show they are even older and may go back roughly 100 million years.
Around 7000 to 4000 BC, humans created the habitat for many species of Orchids and allowed them to spread to the north, by settling and converting wild shrub areas into fertile pastures.

Etymology
The Orchis genus gets its name from the Ancient Greek word ‘orchis’, meaning "testicle", referring to appearance of the two globular root tubers, tuberoids, which led to orchid root being used as aphrodisiacs since ancient times.

The scientific binomial name of most of the Orchid species were initially proposed by the Swedish naturalist and botanist Carl von Linné (1707–1778) in 1753-59, in his famous opus “Species Plantarum”, first edition.

The names have been subsequently amended to the ones currently accepted by the British botanist Robert Brown (1773 - 1858) in 1813.

Worldwide distribution
They have been reported from Japan, Mongolia, Russia, Turkey, to the east of Siberia, the Chinese Himalayas, to the Himalayas of the east, Nepal, Pakistan, the west of the Himalayas, Bhután, Myanmar, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, The United Kingdom, and France.

Habitat & Ecology
It is found growing in the cool alpine meadows at elevation up to 3000 meters.
A majority of orchids are perennial epiphytes, which grow anchored to trees or shrubs in the tropics and subtropics. Some species are lithophytes, growing on rocks or very rocky soil. Other orchids, including the majority of temperate Orchidaceae – Europe, are terrestrial and can be found in habitat areas such as grasslands or forest.

Symbiosis
Epipogium aphyllum (‘The Spurred Coral-Root’, ‘The Ghost Orchid’) and Neottia nidus-avis (‘The Bird's-Nest Orchid’) are non-photosynthetic orchid.

Once thought to be saprophytic, Epipogium aphyllum and Neottia nidus-avis are actually mycoheterotrophs (or epiparasites) obtaining their nutrients from mycorrhizal networks involving basidiomycetes mushroom species that are in turn associated with the roots of various species of coniferous trees, a process known as mycotrophic nutrition. The mycorrhizal fungi derive their nutrients from the decaying leaves of the woodland humus.

They grow from an underground, burrowing stem, which lacks chlorophyll and possesses ephemeral leaves that are small scales.

Flowering Time
Depending on location, Orchis militaris (‘The Military Orchid’) flowers from March to June. Most of them are in full flower in May.
Spiranthes spiralis (‘Autumn Lady's-Tresses’, ‘The Twisting Flower’) blooms in August and September.

Reproduction
The flowers are believed to mimic the colours and pheromones of certain bees to attract them.
The flowers are hermaphrodite (have both male and female organs) and entomogamous, pollinated by various insects, including moths, a phenomenon known as entomophily.
The mechanism by which its pairs of pollinia attach themselves to an insect's proboscis was discovered by the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and described in his book on the ‘Fertilisation of Orchids’ (1862).
Sometimes autogamous reproduction occurs, (or ‘self-pollination’: it does not need the insect as it may self-pollinate - the pollinia crumble and some pollen falls on the stigma, fertilizing the flower), as the flowers often fail to open entirely.
Interestingly they have often been found to hybridize with other species of orchids.

Propagation
When fecundated, orchid flowers produce a fruit on which develop thousands of very small seeds like grains, devoid of reserves.

Seeds are numerous and tiny, wind dispersed, the majority falling in the close vicinity of the mother plant.
However the seeds germination is conditioned by the presence of specific fungi.
As characteristic of all orchids, species are dependent on a mycorrhizal symbiosis. This allows some species to have reduced leaves and need little chlorophyll. Roots rely on mycorrhiza fungus to grow.

Threats & Conservation
All orchids are included under Annex B of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
Measures to be taken in order to regenerate this endangered species could be: protection of the living individuals through legislation, protection from ploughing, agriculture and trampling, artificial propagation, re-introduction, seed collections, and monitoring and surveillance of the existing populations and sites.

Edible Uses
Edible Parts: Root and tuber
Edible Uses: Tuber – cooked
Salep is very nutritive and demulcent, for which properties it has been used from time immemorial.
For many centuries starch has been extracted from the tubers of various kinds of Orchis and exported under the name of Sahlep (an Arabian word, corrupted into English as Saloop or Salep). It was used, especially in the Middle and Far East, for making a wholesome and nutritious drink of the same name. It contains a nutritious starch-like polysaccharide called glucomannan.
Before coffee supplanted it, it was sold at stalls in the streets of London. The best English Salep came from Oxfordshire, but the tubers were chiefly imported from the East. Charles Lamb refers to a 'Salopian shop' in Fleet Street, and says that to many tastes it has 'a delicacy beyond the China luxury,' - (tea) and adds that: 'a basin of it at three-halfpence, accompanied by a slice of bread-and-butter at a halfpenny, is an ideal breakfast for a chimney-sweep. '

Medicinal Uses
Salep was held in great repute in herbal medicine, being largely employed as a strengthening medicine with soothing properties.
To allay irritation of the gastro-intestinal canal is used by shaking 1 part of powdered Salep with 10 parts of cold water, until it is uniformly diffused. After that, 90 parts of boiling water or milk are added and the whole well agitated. A decoction flavored with sugar and spice, or wine, is an agreeable drink for invalids. Sassafras chips were sometimes added, or cloves, cinnamon and ginger.
Salep cures worms in children. It heals the 'kings evil' or Scrofula (Scrophula or Struma), which refers to a variety of skin diseases; in particular, cures a form of tuberculosis, affecting the lymph nodes of the neck.

Cultivation details
Plants prefer well-drained low-fertility soils and areas with partial shade. This species is cool to intermediate growing.
Easily grown on a good loamy soil. Requires a deep rich soil and also prefers a chalky soil. Orchids are, in general, shallow-rooting plants of well drained low fertility soils. Their symbiotic relationship with a fungus in the soil allows them to obtain sufficient nutrients and be able to compete successfully with other plants.
They are very sensitive to the addition of fertilizers or fungicides since these can harm the symbiotic fungus and thus kill the orchid. This symbiotic relationship makes them very difficult to cultivate, though they will sometimes appear uninvited in a garden and will then thrive. Transplanting can damage the plant.

Palace Alpine Flowers Stock

nora@noraphotos.com (Nora Photos) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 10:39:59 GMT

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Patagonia, South America. Wildlife Stock

nora@noraphotos.com (Nora Photos) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 10:36:55 GMT

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Tibetan Wildflowers. Western & South Tibet Stock

nora@noraphotos.com (Nora Photos) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 10:08:41 GMT

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Photography World Travel Journals Stock

nora@noraphotos.com (Nora Photos) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 09:29:34 GMT

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The Peles Castle. Snowstorms. Sinaia. Romania Stock

nora@noraphotos.com (Nora Photos) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 09:25:29 GMT

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Poppy Fields. Bulgaria. Original Colours Stock

nora@noraphotos.com (Nora Photos) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 09:24:58 GMT

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Sunflower Fields. Romania Stock

nora@noraphotos.com (Nora Photos) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 09:22:56 GMT

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Deforestation of the Danube Delta. Romania Stock

nora@noraphotos.com (Nora Photos) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 09:21:06 GMT

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Forest Light. Study Stock

nora@noraphotos.com (Nora Photos) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 09:14:18 GMT

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Poppy Fields. Bulgaria Stock

nora@noraphotos.com (Nora Photos) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 09:10:15 GMT

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Paeonia peregrina var. romanica. Romania Stock

nora@noraphotos.com (Nora Photos) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 09:10:13 GMT

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Various Stock

nora@noraphotos.com (Nora Photos) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 08:17:30 GMT

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Various/Posters P

nora@noraphotos.com (Nora Photos) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 07:52:21 GMT

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Sunset Kiteboarding on the Mediterranean Sea P

nora@noraphotos.com (Nora Photos) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 03:55:04 GMT

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