ANPS visits a dry hillside

Just joking: it wasn't quite that dry today!  Enough with the Carnegiea gigantea let us move on to the foothills of Mount Majura.

 The weather was fine and even the clouds were very high cirrus - very much fine weather clouds.
Things weren't that fine on the ground with a fairly typical TAMS sign warning us off.  They can't even be bothered to give the plant its correct name as the endangered taxon is L. a. tricolor.
 Not only were the plants extremely common over a large area  they were even in flower in some parts!
 We next have a puzzle.  I encountered a very nice Kurrajong (Brachychiton populneus) with very attractive red petioles (which most other members of the species seen today also showed).
However about 4m away was another brachychiton with yellow-green petioles.  Why is this so?
 An Acacia implexa was flowering!  Poor confused thing.
 So was an Eucalyptus meliodora (most others just had buds).  I am sure they normally flower in Summer.
 Here is a very dry patch of Chrysocephalum semipapposum.  I did explore this and there were no Chollas growing in the middle of the patch.
However a few heads were still showing some colour.
 Here we have a classic Ameyena miqueli showing that all 3 florets have a clear pedicel.  There were a lot of mistletoes around which is a very good sign for the diversity of the area.  (That point and this family is covered in a later post.)
After finding a very much 'past-it' example of Styphelia triflora earlier in the walk about the last plant we saw had a nice display of flowers.  I couldn't decide which of these images to include so have stuck them both in!

 I checked this 'watcher ' for a joey.  Then checked the undertail area and realised that a joey in the pouch -or indeed a pouch - was unlikely.
 Continuing my series of blue sky birds this Galah made a pleasant snap.
Although Roger wasn't with us I did find a couple in interesting arthropods to photograph.  Thankfully this one was easy to identify as Agonoscelis rutila. Its common name is Horehound bug - look what it is feeding on!
 I will stretch my knowledge and ID this as a caterpillar!
 Finally, here is a view from the high point of the walk.
The following image is nothing to do with the walk but I thought members of ANPS might appreciate the sentiment (click on it to get a bigger image)..


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