Spring continues to flower up

This year we have had the most spectacular flowering of Leucopogon fletcheri that I have noticed.  The heathy areas around our block are a mass of white and have been for 2 weeks.  The linked post also celebrates the appearance of the blue not-Caladenia Cyanicula caerulea, and they are also still evident.

Other species are now getting in on the act.

We have found the first specimens of Glossodia major on our block.  They appeared a couple of days earlier in a more open location on the roadside.  I have focused on the column here as it also shows the white waxy lip.
 This is Lissanthe strigosa, Peach Heath.  It always blooms a little later than the other heaths.  It i pleasing that the colony seems to be spreading.
A traditional (ie out of focus) shot of Tetratheca sp.  I have no idea why I have so much difficulty getting decent images of this species.
Possibly lighting is the problem?  This image, taken in shade, seems better.
The first flowers of a member of the family Fabaceae (the Latin dodges the pea/bean controversy, but still raises issues as the genus Faba no longer exists).  This is the unspellable Bossiaea buxifolia.
Also in the 'firsts' department are Yam Daisies (Microseris lanceolata).
Drosera sp.
Moving on from plants a leaf beetle.  It is a member of the Chrysomelinae sub-family, possibly Paropsisterna sp.  It was feeding on Kunzea ericoides.

Comments

Judi Gray said…
these wildflowers are just beautiful - how lucky you are to have them "show up" at your property.
28 September 2013 at 20:58:00 GMT+10
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A tour of the West (part 1)

Image
A friend from my time in the UN sent me some photos of her family trip along Route 66.  They did this is a large camperwagon rather than a Chevy Corvette (apparently the kids jacked up about being offered a trip in the trunk).  It seems to have been a very good trip for them and most interesting to see their photos.  It was also educational for me, as I found out the German for rocking chair (schaukelstuhl, since you ask). They did 7200 miles in 30 days - a pretty serious bit of distance. This made me think of the trips we did in 1981 when living in Denver.  Frances initiated that idea by getting a book about the National Parks of the West  and marking interesting places.  I then worked out a route on a Rand-McNally Road Atlas (GPS was unknown then  - as were iPhones, personal computers and the internet).  From memory, taking nearly the whole Summer school holidays we covered about 10,000 miles in 70 days.  Here, approximately,  are our routes: That map comes from Google Maps (G
Read more

Insects from pine trees

Image
This afternoon (13/1/2015) we were looking out of our sunroom and noticed a strange bit of mist.  On getting my binoculars on the case I found it to be a cloud of tens of thousand of insects.  They appeared with naked eye to be flying away, but with binoculars I thought they were circling. Here are some images In the second one it may be possible to see there are two streams coming from the top of each tree. There was a loud buzzing noise but that could just be several thousand wings. Earlier in the day Frances had been to some nearby willows and they were infested with many little black soft bodied insects.  Perhaps they shifted to the pines and were swarming? Help!! Any information welcome. A colleague, from Wamboin, had noticed a similat phenomenon, but involvng eucalypts rather than pines!  Here are the photos he took with his phone. I have consulted some expert friends.   Their responses were: I would have gone for chironomids. I recall years ago driving al
Read more

Satin Bowerbird gets ready for Lanigans Ball.

Image
Having some time to spare today I went to check the bower near "Tom Green's Seat" in the Australian National Botanic Gardens.  The bower was well occupied by what I take to be - based on the green plumage and yellow bill - a 5th or 6th year male Satin Bowerbird.  (With all these images, click on them for a bigger - unfortunately not better focused picture.  The shots were taken hand held on full zoom from about 10m distance into a fairly well shaded location.) He was very much engaged in adding to the construction. Then it seemed that another bird called from the bush above.  This led to a whole lot of activity: the most spectacular (and worst imaged) was a flash of the wings: The bird also did a fair bit of hopping around.  Given that it was still immature I called to mind the greatest traditional Irish song of all time: Diarmuid O'Leary and the Bards performing Lanigan's Ball .  This ditty refers to spending "6 long months at Brooks Academy learning
Read more