Tag: Non-endemic plants

And finally, for today, I found one last plant on my wander: acacia glaucoptera. This is a low, prostrate, spreading acacia with a really unusual leaf shape. It develops lovely yellow flowers like pom poms along the underside of the leaves.

I put five in the garden because I’d seen it here “in the hills” and fell in love with it. I’m not sure why, but it’s one of my favourite plants in the garden at home.

So, here’s a close up picture of the one here that kindled my passion. I tried to get a “whole plant” picture and, frankly, failed. It’s about 3m across and cascades down a bank in a very elegant way.

And here are some pictures of the ones at home:

Here’s the best picture I have a whole plant at home:

And here’s one in the front garden doing well under the agonis flexuosas (“WA peppermint tree” aka “Western Power’s nightmare”):

They do this thing where the leaf tips start out red. It makes them very appealing, in my opinion, but I guess not everyone would agree…sad, misguided fools:

And, this specimen is in the back garden. The pictures a bit unimpressive except for the appearance of the first blooms:

Finally, once again I discover that the plant is not endemic to the Mandurah region…how did this happen? It’s got so bad I’ve created a “non-endemic plants” tag. I was so sure I’d done my research and sourced largely local species. And yet now every plant I blog about turns out to be from elsewhere in WA. It could be that I’m writing about the ones I like the most and hence “bent the rules” for…or it could be that I suffered some strange “cognitive dissonance” event and fooled myself into believing I was sourcing local plants. It’s most odd. Anyway, never mind. It’s a beautiful plant and isn’t too far from it’s natural environment, which is the Albany to Esperance region…really?! Maybe we’re living in the wrong part of WA…

 

 

 

It’s day one of my “solo” time here in the hills and I took the opportunity of a gap in the rain to get away from Bertie for a couple of hours and wander the grounds: 150 acres of well established Jarrah/Marree forest (that’s Euclayptus marginata and Corymbia ,previously Eucalyptus, calophylla for the anal amongst us).

I didn’t have to go far to find a spectacular flower to gawp at, Kunzea baxteri:

…it’s just down the hill on the way to the tunnel house full of native plants, I was on my way down for a drooling session. It must have been planted because, guess what, it’s not endemic to this region. Oh dear, here we go again. Another plant I’ve put in the garden at home that really shouldn’t be there. In this case it turns out Kunzea baxteri seems to have come from the Esperance area…they seem to have all the best plants down there.

Anyway, Jesse the wildlife photographer in Mandurah tells me they are very good for attracting honey eating birds, so that’s my excuse on this occasion.

The flower seems start as a bud, which opens up into a little cup and then starts sprouting the hairs that make up the flower. (I’m certain there are technical names for all those bits…I’ll get to them some other time.) For now, the various stages are visible in this picture:

Anyway, the full bush looks like this:

Finally, we have one of these in the garden at home. Here it is:

A Western Australian native, of course, endemic to the south coast from Esperance through to west of Albany (according to the genuinely impressive Florabase). It seems to grow well further north as well. It’s a low shrub that forms this bushy structure somewhat reminiscent of a cumulus cloud.

There’s one “here in the hills” which is very impressive. This picture doesn’t do the form justice:

I’m finding it a challenge to take interesting pictures of whole plants. I think it’s because they sort of merge into the plants around them in a photo. They seem very flat. Anyway, this plant is lot less “ho hum” in the flesh.

Here’s a couple of shots of it close up.

This is so close to flowering. According to the pictures on Florabase it’s going to burst into some really gorgeous purple flowers soon. I’m finding it interesting the way the WA native flowers hide their internal colour. These buds look pink and yellow, but inside they should be purple. In a similar way, I found some newly budding hypocalymma angustifolium flowers today that are pink on the outside, but white as they open (link to pictures of the flower). Do all flowers do this? Anyway, I have six weeks here, so I should see them flower before I leave…I can’t wait!

I’m focussed on the melaleuca violacea because it was seeing the specimen in the garden “here in the hills” that inspired me to put two in our garden at home.

For completeness, here are some uninspired shots of them…

M. Violacea is yet another example (see also here and here) of a plant that breaks my stated objective of using only plants endemic to the Peel/Mandurah region. Once again I succumbed to them because: (a) they are truly beautiful, (b) they are being grown commercially and (c) I felt the need for some smaller shrubs. I’m sure that given time and experience I could have found something local to do the job and then propagated it for myself…it’s the time factor which is the decider; this gardening “thing” doesn’t respond well to pressure!