WA’s emblematic flower may be synonymous with Springtime, but it is no slave to the calendar.
Well before Winter 2022’s alleged end, it – and not a few other “iconic”, “Spring-flowering” WA endemics – were already very evidently flowering in the quasi-natural bushland section of Perth’s Kings Park.
It is an easy walk – or an even shorter free bus trip’s distance – from the CBD.
Most of Perth’s more than two million residents are unaware that their city has no peer, globally, in terms of the number and diversity of endemic flowering plants.
None of them naturally occur in any other metropolis.
If you do not already know much about Kangaroo Paws and/or how to grow them in your garden, click here.
Pictured above, blooming in Kings Park on 22 August 2022, is WA’s floral emblem, Anigozanthos manglesii, generally known as the red and green kangaroo paw, or Mangle’s kangaroo paw.
Utterly stonkering as is the Spring flowering, in southwest WA any bushwalker can easily encounter something endemic, exquisite, in bloom, at any time.
And you don’t even need to be a bushwalker.
Kings Park’s Banksia Garden always has at least one species (usually, a good deal more than one) putting on a spectacular “show”.
The overwhelming majority of Banksia-proper species – 62 out of 76 – naturally occur only in WA; all 62 “locals” are grown in the Banksia Garden, and 5 of them occur naturally in Kings Park’s bushland.
The photo below was taken a few days after the Winter solstice.
You are not looking at just two flowers.
Pictured are two flower spikes; each has at least several hundred flowers.
Pelican Yoga’s next destination: a village in Rajasthan where not much “construction” or “development” goes on, but its skyline is often full of cranes.