"Chrysums" and other yellow daisies

There are many native plants in Australia which used to belong to the family Compositae but are now classified to Asteraceae.  Or perhaps they are still classified to Compositae - Wikipedia seems to alternate _ and trying to sort that out is probably worth several PhDs and a couple of books.  The main thing is that there are a lot of them in this area, many of which have pretty yellow and/or white flowers.  Here are a few of them which demonstrate the diversity possible, even within a fairly tightly defined group.

The archetypal plant in this group is 'the' everlasting daisy which I think is the name best applied to what is now called Leucochrysum albicans.  That does of course understate the use of italics since the local version - declared endangered but carpeting the area in this gloriously rainy year - is actually Leucochrysum albicans albicans tricolor.  The common name of Hoary Sunray does have the advantage of using less ink!
I particularly like this image as it shows white and yellow petals and the pink bracts covering the buds.  the next image shows how some of the flowers are white while others are yellow. Generally they are found in different clumps but an area close home has a mixed crop.
The final image of this species (or rather variety) is included to show a verge covered with them.  I would have, in past years, rated this as a large clump but in 2010 it only rates a 'modest'!
One of the more outstanding - in the sense of being tall and standing out -  members of the group is Xerochrysum viscosum, the Sticky Everlasting.   The 'Xero' component of the scientific name implies 'dry' and these certainly do well as dried - or everlasting flowers.  In fact surprisingly all parts of the latin are sensible with chrysum meaning yellow (true) and viscosum representing sticky (also true).
A litle shorter and with greyer foliage is Coronidium scorpiodes.  This means 'Little crown" and "scorpion like": the latter referring to the curved stems resembling a scorpions tail (que? I think whoever put that name on had never seen a scorpion).  The generic name used to be Helichrysum or yellow sun but taxonomists have to have things to do.
Another larger plant within the group is the Yam daisy, Microseris lanceolata.   I have no idea what the Latin means, but presumably the Yam element refers to the tap root which was edible (ie it will serve as food if you are too far from a burger stand).  The two images show a flower and (what I am fairly sure is) a seed head of this species, which I think is fairly spiffy.
The next few images are simply illustrations of variability.  The first is Chrysocephalum apiculatum

Next is a Craspedia ...
 ... and finally  Leptorhyncus 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Insects from pine trees

Image
This afternoon (13/1/2015) we were looking out of our sunroom and noticed a strange bit of mist.  On getting my binoculars on the case I found it to be a cloud of tens of thousand of insects.  They appeared with naked eye to be flying away, but with binoculars I thought they were circling. Here are some images In the second one it may be possible to see there are two streams coming from the top of each tree. There was a loud buzzing noise but that could just be several thousand wings. Earlier in the day Frances had been to some nearby willows and they were infested with many little black soft bodied insects.  Perhaps they shifted to the pines and were swarming? Help!! Any information welcome. A colleague, from Wamboin, had noticed a similat phenomenon, but involvng eucalypts rather than pines!  Here are the photos he took with his phone. I have consulted some expert friends.   Their responses were: I would have gone for chironomids. I rec...
Read more

A tour of the West (part 1)

Image
A friend from my time in the UN sent me some photos of her family trip along Route 66.  They did this is a large camperwagon rather than a Chevy Corvette (apparently the kids jacked up about being offered a trip in the trunk).  It seems to have been a very good trip for them and most interesting to see their photos.  It was also educational for me, as I found out the German for rocking chair (schaukelstuhl, since you ask). They did 7200 miles in 30 days - a pretty serious bit of distance. This made me think of the trips we did in 1981 when living in Denver.  Frances initiated that idea by getting a book about the National Parks of the West  and marking interesting places.  I then worked out a route on a Rand-McNally Road Atlas (GPS was unknown then  - as were iPhones, personal computers and the internet).  From memory, taking nearly the whole Summer school holidays we covered about 10,000 miles in 70 days.  Here, approximately,  are ...
Read more

Maslins beach rules

Image
Anyone who was in Adelaide in the 1970s will be having a good nudge nudge at that title.  However the beach is really nice even though it is the haunt (in Summer ) of naked people.  (As an aside one of the 'van park staff was talking to some other guests and commented that the sights on the beach in Summer were not at all exciting.)  In April it is the haunt of seniors, many of them exercising their dogs, and thus a far more attractive place. Getting to the beach was a walk of about 1km along roads, from our van.  The second half of this went past a rather daggy looking paddock with many formed ridges in it, as though it was irrigated, although a water sources wasn't evident.  The paddock got interesting towards the end as some green parrots appeared.  Thanks to Frances eye for detail we have subsequently identified these as Elegant Parrots: my first lifer for 2014.    The locale is indicated by the red lines in this mudmap: Here are the bird...
Read more