Wild Flower Watch III

What Happened to Spring?

Well it is meant to be spring down this way.

It seemed like it in the middle of the week with bright sun and warm 27°C (80°F) weather.

But come the weekend it was miserable, yesterday it was sleeting!

I was worried that I wouldn’t manage to get down to Queenstown Cemetery to check the wild flowers.

But this morning the weather relented a little. It was still overcast at 7:00 when I was up so I snuck out between showers leaving Deb to sleep in.

So what was there this week?

 The first thing I saw were these buds. 

I was hoping they are a native, but thinking about it they might be an exotic weed possibly a freesia, perhaps we’ll see next week.

Last week I found one solitary Waxlip Orchid (Glossodia major), and was hoping to catch another of the beauties again.

So I was relieved to find this one. You can see how wet it was from the drops of rain on this flower.

 

The same flower from a different angle.

 

You have to watch where you are treading because hiding among the grasses are all kinds of delights.

 

The little peas that were so vibrant a couple of weeks ago are looking worse for wear.

 

Except another they seem to be budding for another show.

 

There were more Goodenia this week.

 

Just a couple of Blue Flax Lily (Dianella caerulea) flowers were poking out. These hang face down so I had my camera on its back looking up at this.

The piccie is hopelessly overexposed because of the light from the sky, but I thought it was an interesting shot, with the light shining through the petals.

I’ve included this piccie I took last year to give a better idea of what they look like.

 

I needn’t have worried about finding Waxlips, as I climbed the hill further into the cemetery I realised the week has brought literally hundreds of them out

Here is a little clump of them.

 

The wind began to pick up and the rain threatened so I just paused to catch a shot of this Bearded Heath before I left.

 

I can’t wait to see what is on show next week!

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