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Tag: wildflowers

October 30 2023: Darling Range flora, “up close” (#6 in series)

 

 

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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October 30 2023: Darling Range flora, “up close” (#5 in series) + musical bonus

 

 

 

The featured image’s flower heads and the musical bonus have no overt, particular connection.

Both, however, are uncommonly beautiful, exquisitely proportioned, and will reward your close attention.

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October 30 2023: Darling Range flora, “up close” (#4 in series)

 

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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October 30 2023: Darling Range flora, “up close” (#2 in series)

 

 

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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October 30 2023: Darling Range flora, “up close” (#1 in series)

 

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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Australian bee, Western honey bee: as a Cessna is to a 747

 

Generally, when Australian humans think of bees, they are thinking of Apis mellifera, the so-called “western” – or “European” – honey bee.

When Australian humans venture outdoors, Apis mellifera is the only bee species that most of them ever notice and/or recognise.

Australia has an estimated two thousand native bee species; circa 1,600 of them have been identified.

Around 800 identified species live in Western Australia; many of them live only in some part/s of Western Australia.

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MacDonnell Ranges (#15 in single image series: flowering, Ormiston Gorge)

 

 

 

After taking the photo featured in #14 in this series, my beloved and I decided to scramble our way up to the path that followed a ridge line, rather than retrace our steps along the gorge’s floor

This proved surprisingly easy.

Less than ten minutes later we were heading back to Ormiston HQ, via a well-made pathway that gave us easy access to the lookout from which I took the image featured in this series’ first chapter.

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Shenton Bushland: flowering

 

 

On the afternoon of 26 August 2023 Shenton Bushland was already very colourful, although “peak Springtime flowering” was probably still a few weeks away.

None of this post’s flowers are hard to find at this time of year, providing you are in the right kind of place, within southwest Western Australia.

Shenton Bushland is one of several “right kinds of place” that are less than 20 minutes away from Perth’s CBD.

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Kings Park, late August 2023

 

 

Perth’s Kings Park is really three parks in one… plus “lookouts”.

The “lookouts” offer sweeping views from the rim of the scarp on Kings Park’s eastern and southern sides.

Looking east, they flatter the adjacent CBD, and look across the Swan Coastal Plain to the Darling Scarp.

Looking south, they show the full splendour of the Swan-Canning estuary, around which Perth’s wealthier suburbs sit.

If you walk (or catch a free bus) from the CBD – or West Perth – into Kings Park, the loveliness of its manicured, “picnic-friendly”, well-treed, grassed parkland is immediately obvious, as you can see in the featured image, above.

Every pleasant, sunny weekend, thousands of people take advantage of Kings Park’s generous supply of that kind of parkland.

However, what makes Kings Park so very special are its two other kinds of “park”:  a superb botanical garden (which showcases WA’s extraordinary flora, conducts internationally significant research, and provides useful information to the general public) and its astonishingly expansive, essentially “natural” bush/woodland section.

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