Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
In Perth, 2023’s final full moon rose 80 minutes before the sun set, on December 25.
By 6.15 pm on Christmas Day it was no longer horribly hot, so we decided to stroll down to Lake Monger – “our” local lake.
I took the photo at 7.26 pm, two minutes after sunset.
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This post’s six-legged hero is not a Christmas beetle, and the flower which s/he is targeting (and, thereby, probably pollinating) is one of several related “devils”.
These handicaps notwithstanding, “handsome beetle + star-shaped flower head” yields a “Christmassy” image…however accidentally!
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In the title-song on her 1974 LP, Court and Spark, Joni Mitchell called Los Angeles city of the fallen angels.
In December 2023 “The Terrace” – the unusually long through street in the non-Scottish Perth’s CBD – has a lot of upstanding angels, along with banners that declare Christmas Lives Here.
Needless to say, their presence will be brief.
And – as you can see in the featured image – they are dwarfed by towers, named after the temporal powers that have prevailed here, year round, since the 1960s.
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Until now, every episode in this series has featured a “local” hero.
In most cases, the relevant flowering plant has been (and will be, in the remaining few episodes) one that naturally occurs only in some particular parts of southwest Western Australia.
Today’s exception is an interloper from the Mediterranean basin.
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This post’s photos were all taken on 30 October 2023, when the sun was high in an unclouded West Australian sky.
Each picture looks more-or-less straight down at the harshly-lit ground in so-called “northern Jarrah forest”, circa 60 kilometres southeast of Perth.
Much of this forest/woodland (this bit included) is in reality definitely-not-virgin, mixed forest/woodland, typically co-dominated by jarrah and marri trees, or by wandoo.
Even within a small, walkable area – as is the case here – the apparent “richness” or “poverty” of the forest floor is hugely variable, depending on precisely where one is standing and on what is going on at the particular time, within any particular year.
”Exactly the same place” can appear “utterly unlike itself”, from one time to another.
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One of the nigh-infinite pleasures of walking in southwestern Australian forest/woodland/bush:
once “attuned”, you begin to notice that the “forest floor” – when viewed at or near ground level, up close – often looks like a multi-layered, uncommonly-colourful “forest”, in its own right.
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Elythranthera – known as “enamel orchids” – is a petite genus, endemic to Western Australia’s southwest.
It has just two species-proper, plus one “recognised” other form.
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A suitable title for this post’s hero:
The Lonely Spider
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In this episode no flowers are readily visible, but its heroes are flowering plants.
Their genus has circa 700 species and its tallest members are “our” planet’s tallest flowering plants.
Most Eucalyptus species call Australia home, although many now flourish – some of them rather too well – on every other human-inhabited continent.
They dominate most Australian forests and woodlands.
Wandoo woodlands exist only in certain parts of Australia’s southwest.
No matter how well-travelled, persons lucky enough to have experienced wandoo woodland tend to regard it as something unique and highly likeable…notwithstanding the “unhappy” fact that ticks are also partial to it.
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I am almost certain that today’s hero is a fellow member of the genus Patersonia, but not the same species as those in #7 through #9 in this series.
To me, it remains a UFO – an unknown flowering organism.
If you can positively identify it, I’d be glad to be enlightened, and would then update this post.
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