ANPS does Tinderry NR

I'll start by echoing Ros's thanks to Roger and Christine for the garden tour, coffee and cakes after the walk.  Good wishes to them for their Northern expedition.

We were indeed lucky with the weather.  Before leaving home it seemed cold and windy, but I, like most people, shed a layer during the day.  While it did look a tad ominous towards the end ...
 ... no precipitation occurred.

Getting on to the plants seen, I will begin with the orchids, or evidence thereof, seen.  This was a surprisingly good haul, although the designation "sp." is very appropriate.  The first plant spotted was Corunastylis sp. I didn't keep count of the number of colonies, let alone plants, seen but they were widely distributed throughout the area.

 A clear specimen of Speculantha sp. was found in a 'gone over ' condition.  The timing of flowering given in The Book suggests that S. rubescens is the more likely of the two local species, but given the weirdness of this season that is insufficient evidence to become specific.
Noting the rosette at the base of the stem, we were fairly confident that another much larger colony of rosettes had been seen a little earlier.
On the subject of weird seasons, neither of the local species of Bunochilus should be flowering until at least September.  Perhaps this one is planning to stay in bud for the next 4 months?  Again, quite a few colonies were found after the first puzzling specimen.  (It was also very hard to photograph - if you think this image is naff you should see the others I took.)
We also saw quite a few Thelymitra leaves suggesting this could be a useful venue for an orchid hunt in Spring-Summer.

 A very few flowering beans were encountered.  This was identified pro tem as Dillwynnia retorta ssp phylicoides, but further research suggest that a split should be recognised so it is simply D. phylicoides
Acacia genistifolia (also a member of the Fabaceae and thus technically a bean, although it doesn't look like one) was strutting its stuff as the first member of the genus to flower.  In places a magnificent display was evident.
The only heath found flowering was Melicrus urceolatus. This one was inhabited by an ant, which was apparently a former ant.
A few Hibbertia obtusifolia was flowering.
Quite a few plants of Comesperma ericinum were spotted, but this was th e only one I noticed that was really close to flowering.
Another bean!  Bossiaea buxifolia.
This very tall Callitris endlicheri was indeed a surprise.  I normally think of these as being in the 3 -5m height range rather than about 10m achieved by this one.
The furrowed bark was heavily laden with this waxy deposit.
Back at ground level a Drosera sp. suggested the gully in which we had lunch was basically damp.
There was quite a lot of fungus around and more work is needed to attach names to them.


Quite a few of the Eucalyptus rossii were heavily scribbled.
T(his spider ant (Leptomyrmex erythrocephalus) was busy replenishing its larder with a honey bee.
A bug on a Choretrum pauciflorum.
Finally a view from the patio at Tilembeya.

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