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Pelican Yoga wishes you all a happy and honeyed 2025.
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This little series celebrates a favourite place, as it was on Sunday, 27 October 2024 – our first fully-waking day after our return to home turf.
(coming soon to Pelican Yoga: a teaser-series devoted to two contrasting parts of Indonesia. One is very sparsely populated. The other is “our” planet’s most-populous large island )
”European” calendars suggest it is still springtime in Perth.
In fact, the world’s greatest substantial-city, entirely-natural springtime flower-show ended some weeks ago.
Here, however, some wonderful plants are in flower at any time of year…plants which naturally occur only in WA’s southwest.
This post’s hero is one of them.
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On the first day of October in 1872 the British Parliament declared a Reserve on Perth’s Mount Eliza,
The new Perth Park overlooked the then decidedly modest capital of the Colony of Western Australia.
In 1901 Perth Park was renamed Kings Park, following the coronation of King Edward VII.
Until more than a decade into the 1900s, Perth was smaller than not a few of eastern Australia’s country towns.
Paradoxically, one reason why Perth managed to have a bigger, wilder – and, arguably, more wonderful, and equally central – city park than New York’s Central Park is that when it was p/reserved, Kings Park’s site would have been viewed as utterly superfluous to Perth’s future urban expansion.
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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.
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The (very) different phases of an individual Banksia flower spike’s development are astonishing.
Over time, the very same spike’s appearance can range from “perfectly symmetrical, colourful, immaculately neat” through to “grotesque, seemingly shambolic and almost monochrome”, and from “petite” to “gigantic”.
In some species, an individual bush’s different spikes can simultaneously exhibit all of the aforementioned qualities.
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Banksia coccinea – Scarlet Banksia, also known as “Albany Banksia” or “Waratah Banksia” – is globally popular with gardeners and florists.
Its natural range, however, covers a mere smidgeon of near-coastal southern Western Australia.
Australia has 79 Banksia-proper species.
61 of them occur naturally only in WA’s southwest.
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This post, the two recent Boab posts, and two future posts are all fruits of the afternoon of the same day – 20.05.21.
Southwestern Australia’s Spring flowering is indeed one of the world’s most astonishing and beautiful natural phenomena, and Kings Park in Spring is guaranteed to leave any Northern Hemisphere resident’s jaws agape.
It is, however, a BIG mistake to pay attention in Spring, only.
In southwest WA generally, and Kings Park specifically, you can easily see some extraordinary endemic species, in full bloom, at any time; Kings Park’s Banksia Garden never disappoints.
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…as artfully repurposed by my beloved.
Not all of these found/locally-scrounged objects are easy to identify!
This post also salutes the first rock musicians.
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Perth’s King’s Park – a short walk or free bus trip from the CBD – is bigger than New York’s Central Park.
It is also vastly richer in local flora.
Nearer to the Indian Ocean and just 8 kilometres from Perth’s GPO, the even bigger Bold Park has more than 300 local plant species…and (alas!) more than 200 introduced ones.
All photos taken today, Monday September 4, 2017 in Bold Park. Your further zooming/enlarging may prove rewarding.
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