Like #17 in this series, today’s post is the fruit of a little walk along the Waychinicup River’s final kilometre, as mid-afternoon turned into late afternoon on 22 September 2020.
2 CommentsTag: Deep South WA
Neither of the above!
This post explains a perfectly natural, Spring 2020 occurrence in the Waychinicup River
It also offers some “truth” about the alleged health benefits of drinking Guinness.
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Nuytsia Floribunda is generally known as the Western Australian Christmas tree.
In southwest WA (its only home range) most people simply call it a “Christmas tree”.
Enormously more colourful and much more bizarre than any “traditional” Christmas tree, it is usually in full bloom at Christmas.
The world’s largest member of the mistletoe family is hemi-parasitic, rather than merely parasitic; Nuytsia (the single member of its own genus) does photosynthesize, and it has prodigiously long roots.
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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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Like yesterday’s featured image, today’s was taken on the afternoon of 15 March 2021.
Their locations are within circa 300 metres of each other; both are near to where the National Park’s access road crosses the Waychinicup River.
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Waychinicup National Park is a place of remarkably diverse flora – wildflower-wise, it has few peers, anywhere.
It is not a place of very big trees, although less than one hour’s drive away is a much wetter place whose towering Eucalypts are among the world’s tallest flowering plants.
Porongurup’s’ “island” of Karri forest is utterly unlike Waychinicup.
However, the little valley in which sits the Waychinicup access road’s river crossing is home to some venerable, substantial trees.
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…for local insects, it is a rehydration station, a source of minerals, an “air conditioner”, and a source of nest-building material.
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As you can see, the Waychinicup River is in at least reasonably good health.
As you will see in a future post in this series, the appearance of its surface can be remarkably different, depending on exactly when and where an observer looks at it.
(Bob Dylan has never watched the Waychinicup River flow. Tim Winton has, many times)
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Today’s photo was taken at 3.58 pm on March 15, 2021 – ten minutes after the previous post’s image.
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