Acacias, Acacias and more Acacias

The ANPS walk to day went to the Gale Precinct off the Old Cooma Road, immediately to the South of the current limit of  suburban development.  This area is managed by Queanbeyan Landcare in association with the Council.

Proving that even I can learn from past mistakes I will begin by commenting that there were a bunch of Acacia species brightening the area up more than somewhat today.  Let us begin with Acacia genistifolia: this is getting close to the prickliness of the African Acacias (which we now know are not 'really' Acacias at all but a different genus- yet to be named).

Next we have another spiky number Acacia ulicifolia.  Note that although prickly the spikes are much less unpleasant than those of the previous species.

With average luck this next one is Acacia rubida.  This seemed to be getting the good nectar seal of approval from various insects.  Unfortunately it was a tad draftyand I couldn't get a good shot of the various arthropods as they took a slurp.

Let no-one say this blog is unpatriotic.  Here is our national flower Acacia pycnantha: and very gorgeous it was (obviously celebrating the win over the All Blacks).

Returning from that great triumph we come to poverty in the form of Acacia Dawsonii.

Finally here is a twofer: A. genisitifolia in the foreground and A rubida in the background.

Oi vey!  Enough with the wattles already.

Let us move on to to white flowers.  A couple of these featured last week but it is useful to have the comparison.  First up is Leucopogon Fletcherii.  I am not sure I have ever noticed the pink stigmas before and am unsure what a Freudian analyst would make of them!

Next we have the basic, and much less flamboyant Cryptandra amara longiflora:

and conclude this section with Cryptandra propinqua (a target species for the day).

One of the plant highlights of the day was the number of Clematis microphylla plants seen around.  They were everywhere and some of the plants were very large, growing up into eucalypts.  We were unsure if this was a male or female plant: note the apparent stigma on the rightmost flower.

At the other end of the reproductive season many of the Stiphelia triflora plants had fruits on them  the deserve some reward for having pretty flowers late into Winter!

 The area seemed very dry so no fungi were evident.  As noted above there were a lot on insects around, but the only one I was able to photograph was this Cabbage White!  Perhaps the grey green colour of the lichen made it think it had found a feral cabbage?