Little treasures (Wild Flower Watch V)

Once again the Queenstown Cemetery has out done itself.

Once again Al has to confess ignorance of Oz botany!

I saw this tiny star like flower as soon as I went into the cemetery.

 

Absolutely no idea what it is, but it is very sweet. Here it is at another angle

 

These have just been buds until today,
 
I had guessed they are not a native and I was right. They are Yellow Ixia, and as pretty as they are they are essentially a weed in the Oz bush.

I guess this blue delight is a Wahlenbergia species known as Australian bluebells but I could easily be wrong as it doesn’t look quite right.

I haven’t seen this pea before; unlike most of the others in the cemetery it is a creeping vine rather than a little shrub. I think it is Creeping Bossiaea (Bossiaea prostrate)

 

The tiny shrub peas are beginning to wither away

 

No idea what this is, but I guess it might be one of the “heaths”. They are minute, the petals about the size of a rice grain.

 

Another mystery. 

Unfortunately I didn’t notice the blade of grass across the frame until it came to processing the piccies at home

A trigger plant. I think this one has “fired”

 

This odd spear looked like budding flowers,

 

But in extreme close up I think this is actually a head of absolutely minute flowerettes

This Wahlenbergia  (if that is what it is) refused to be overshadowed by a weed!

 

But the treat of the day was definitely an orchid, or should I say number of orchids

 

They are Spotted Sun Orchids (Thelymitra merranae)

I went nuts shooting maybe fifty frames of various specimens poking up through the grass.

This one is just unfurling

 

Close ups

 

And super close ups

 

A spray of several in a group.

 

And this is my favourite of the day.

 

Wild-flower Watch

Some of you might remember that about eleven months ago I did a post which I called “Killers in the Cemetery”

Well as I said yesterday with spring in the air I have wildflowers on the mind. It is a bit early really, but over the next month or so the wildflowers will really spring up.

So today I went back to The Gold Rush era Queenstown Cemetery just to see what has started flowering. Time and weather permitting I hope to get back there most weeks throughout spring to see what delights appear.

Now a warning! Anyone who gets bored with piccies of flowers should come back tomorrow!

Today there were a few flowers beginning the spring flush.

Just outside the cemetery were a couple of common garden plants that have escaped into the bush.

European Snowdrops 

And this Freesia is just coming out.

Now to the natives. Today all the babies of the bush have come out (you’ll see what I mean in a moment) 

This is a native pea, in colour they are like “showy parrot peas” but they aren’t that species.

 

And another piccie of the same plant. These flowers are tiny

A third shot in which I have included my thumbnail as a scale.

 

I have no idea what these are. Some kind of bulb is all I would hazard.

Oz has over 20,000 native plant species, even professional botanists are often not sure what they are looking at. And I am no botanist.

Once again this is a tiny flower.

 

I can be a little more sure with these.

This is one of the “Bearded Heaths” a Leucopogon species, which species I do not know.

You can see why the common name is “bearded” these are hairier than I am!

As you can see I stuck my thumb in again to give a scale. The heath flowers are minute!

 

My favourites are the sundews. Of course these aren’t flowering yet, they are fresh seedlings just a few days old.

Sundews are of course carnivorous, each of those droplets is a sticky trap for tiny insects like ants.

When the leaves first unfold they are this gorgeous red,

 

but after a day or two in the sun they settle down to their normal green