Bottoms up!
Pelican Yoga wishes you all a happy and honeyed 2025.
Leave a CommentTag: wildflowers
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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Caladenia latifolia – generally known as “pink fairy orchids”, or simply “pink fairies” – are not endemic to southwest Western Australia.
They also naturally occur in other southern Australian places, including Tasmania.
In my (totally “unscientific”) experience, as someone who has lived on both sides of the Nullarbor, they appear to be much more “common”/easily-seen in southwest WA than anywhere else I have been.
The pictured ones were among more than a few that were flowering in Hollywood Reserve on 01.09.2024.
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In January 2022 parts of Hollywood were devastated by a very fierce (i.e. hot) fire.
You didn’t hear about it?
My beloved and I have visited Hollywood many times, but the only bit of Los Angeles that we have directly “enjoyed” is its godawful airport.
We harbour no desire to set foot in the famous/infamous Hollywood, but are very fond of the petite, not-famous Hollywood Reserve.
This choice patch of inner-urban bushland sits “right next door” to one of Australia’s major cemeteries.
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Pelican Yoga briefly interrupts its ongoing celebration of autumn 2024 on the Coorong, to celebrate the arrival of spring, in Perth.
Western Australian wildflowers are not fussed about calendars, nor European-derived notions of “the four seasons”.
Four days before the alleged end of winter, in Shenton Bushland it was abundantly evident that spring had already “sprung”.
Kangaroo Paws are now easy to see, as are some (not all, yet) of the “spring-flowering” orchids.
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Whilst rotating through the full 360 degrees, and admiring/photographing splendid vistas in every direction, one should also pay attention to whatever is immediately in front of one’s feet…
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This series final chapter reveals the identity of the “red flecks” in the preceding post’s landscape view.
There’s no finer location in which to experience the two relevant species in their natural state than Fitzgerald River National Park’s East Mount Barren.
If you wish to enjoy a natural experience of them (both species are now popular with gardeners) the only places where you can have that experience are all in or near to Fitzgerald River National Park.
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In Australian places with a Mediterranean-type climate, Spring is “wildflower season”.
However, in virtually any patch of quasi-natural “bush” – most especially, where the soils are sandy and “poor” – at least some species will be flowering, whenever you visit.
Deep Creek National Park’s stringybark forest is one such place.
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If you browse the internet, looking for “mulla mulla”, you soon realise that many Australians mistakenly think that Ptilotus exaltatus is the only such species.
Ptilotus exaltatus – commonly known as “pink mulla mulla” – is likely the best-known; it is notably tall/large, and has probably the widest range, naturally occurring in “poor” soil in not-very-wet places, across much of the Australian continent.
It is, however, far from the only kind of mulla mulla.
Ptilotus exaltatus is not even the only kind of pink mulla mulla.
This post’s pink-tipped hero – Ptilotus manglesii – is more petite, and its blooms are usually ground-huggers.
Arguably, Ptilotus manglesii is even more beautiful than its “exalted” cousin.
Its natural range is within WA’s southwest, only.
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Thysanotus is a genus within the asparagus family.
All but one of its 50 known species are native to Australia.
45 of them occur in Western Australia alone, and most of those exist only in particular parts of WA’s southwest.
They are generally known as “fringe lilies”
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