Spring hits Kowen Forest

I am not referring to the pine trees but the native forest on the escarpment.  We went for a walk there today and scored some very nice flowers.

Hakea decurrens
 There were a lot of Acacias around,  As I have already put photographs of many species on this blog I didn't double up, but these three are additions.
A, genistifolia
 A, pycnantha - proving its suitability as a national flower!
 A. siculiformis
This area is at least 100m lower than home, and this was reflected in a number of members of the family Fabaceae strutting their stuff.

Daviesia ulicifolia
 Pultenaea microphylla
 Indigofera australis: this bush was at least 2m high and 2m wide.  This was far and away the biggest specimen I have ever seen.
The flowers are very attractive in close-up.  It should be noted that the name has nothing to do with a person (unlike the purple Fabaceae covered in yesterday's post).  I could speculate on the genus name  honouring "Indignant of Shepton Mallet" (possibly a relative of "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" or Angry of Mayfair") but I'd be in error: it means 'indigo bearing'.

Craspedia variabilis
 Brachyloma daphnoides - the first of this species  seen this year!
 Leucochrysum albicans albicans  an allegedly endangered plant which is found on many roadsides!
On our last trip there we became geographically embarrassed.  Stone the crows, we did again today.  The problem was again not having gone as far as I thought we had.  Either I misinterpret distance on the map or we are walking so slowly I overestimate the distance we have covered in the elapsed time.  Whatever: it is very annoying!

There were quite a few birds (about 18 species recorded) but no orchids found, nor any fungi.  No reptiles were seen but the small dog was very interested in a few spots suggesting that there were some around.

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