Category: photographs

 

 

This post features this series’ closest views of “purple flags”…with a gnat included, at no extra cost.

Not all “flags” are purple, but the flowers of most members of the Patersonia genus incline to purple. (the exceptions incline to yellow or white)

Patersonia are members of the iris family; most species are endemic to Australia, and the majority are WA-endemic.

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Most of southwest Western Australia has a very extreme version of a so-called “Mediterranean” climate.

There are huge variations from one year (or sequence of several years) to another.

However, in a “proper” year much more than half of the annual rainfall arrives in June-July-August, when the weather is relatively cool.

In December-January-February it is “normally” very hot, and rain falls hardly at all.

Very few watercourses flow “permanently”; to label more than a few of them as “rivers” is to indulge in flattery…or wishful thinking.

There are, however, many modest, so-called “winter creeks”.

In many years, flowering plants and grasses “get cracking”, to take advantage of  the “window” when such a creek is no longer flowing, but its bed is still damp-ish, and the weather is not yet ferociously hot.

The featured image is a “window” into that very “window”.

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This post’s heroes belong to the genus Stylidium.

They are generally known as “trigger plants”.

Almost all of the circa 300 trigger plant species call Australia home, exclusively; Stylidium is this country’s fifth-largest flora genus.

Around half of them are endemic to Australia’s “wild west”; the majority of those species occur only in specific parts of WA’s southwest.

On a warm day some species are much faster “on the draw” than ever was Wyatt Earp…or any other gunslinger in America’s “Wild West”.

The fastest Stylidium “trigger” can complete its “attack” on an insect in as little as 15 milliseconds.

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I think that this post’s two images showcase the flower heads of Pimelea sulphurea, commonly known as yellow banjine.

It is endemic to Western Australia’s southwest; click here to discover more.

As is true of many WA wildflowers, each one of its flower heads contains many individual flowers.

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This post’s photos showcase the effect of the little kangaroo paws’ “Velcro-esque” aspect.

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The featured image shows a remarkably fresh-looking example of Anigozanthos bicolor, commonly known as “little kangaroo paw”.

On October 30 2023 there were many members of this species in bloom, but most of them looked “somewhat past their peak”.

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In order to see “just how much is going on”, you really need to get yourself/your camera near to ground level.

This post’s heroes are (I think) examples of Anigozanthos bicolor, commonly known as “little kangaroo paw” – a petite member of a small genus of bird-pollinated plants which also includes Western Australia’s (rather larger) floral emblem.

As you can surely see, the “hero” species is but one of many different plants that were flourishing on October 30 2023 in some wandoo woodland on the drier, inland side of the Darling Range, circa 100 kilometres southeast of Perth.

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