ANPS goes to seeds at Burra

Today the ANPS Wednesday Walkers revisited a block of land at Burra (opposite the sometime recycling drop off station).

After scaling a mini cliff and overcoming a barbed wire fence we found ourselves in a Joycea pallida habitat.  It wasn't quite thick enough to require shorter member to jump up and down to see other members, but still quite dense.

 Going a little South the grass was a lot lower, presumably as a result of  ....

 .. being converted into  ....

 A rocky patch (with which the area was well endowed) had a nice growth of Cheilanthes austrotenuifolia.  with a surprising common name of Rock Fern!  (Readers interested in some tentative material about ferns seen by the WW group might be interested in this post.)

 Then we started to get into the seeds.  Here we have Vittadinia muelleri - commonly known as Fuzzweed, for obvious reasons.

 Next is Dodonea viscosa, which has the vernacular name of Hop bush.  Again the reason is obvious.

 Bursaria spinosa is often called Blackthorn.  While not obvious from this image, the reason for the vernacular name is quite obvious if one tries to penetrate a thicket of same.

Typha sp was growing in a small dam, which still had some water, and was obviously been used to quench the thirst of the grass recyclers.

 In the upper, well munched area most of the Chrysocephalum apiculatum had gone to seed.

 Carex opressa had also seeded along a creek line.

 Eucalyptus nortonii was also growing in the creekline and had both seed capsules  ...

 .. and buds on the same tree.

 Meanwhile lower down much of the C. apiculaltum still had flowers.

 The only other 'showy' flowers I captured today were two flavours of Brachyscome.  During morning tea B. spathulata was spotted while ..

 ... B. willisii turned up just before lunch.  (The leaves are much less similar than the flowers!)

 There were quite a few birds around today.  A male Scarlet Robin (1 of at least 6 of the species seen during the walk) was very cooperative.

Although the area was very dry there has obviously been a rugged flow of water down the main creek line at some stage.

 I am unsure of the legal status of the area but there was one bit of evidence showing similarity to a Travelling Stock Reserve (TSR).

It is interesting that most of the full size beer bottles found in TSRs are old enough (often going back to the 1950s)  to have the date stamped in the bottom.  This practice stopped in the mid-60s, coinciding with the more widespread use of trucks to shift stock and thus less use of TSRs for the designed purpose.  (An alternate hypothesis - that drovers stopped drinking beer - has a number of flaws!)