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Photo/s of the day.
It has always really awed me, the colour stories in the bushland per month and season (and now, in my garden, which is compromise mostly of local native plants too). For example, September to November is the month of yellow, more than any other colour; it's Acacias and Hibbertias and Conostylis. Red creeps in to say hi in the Anigozanthus (kangaroo paws) and in the grevilleas. But it is yellow's time to reign. A time of bees and jewel beetles and insects. Leave the red plants to the birds in the Winter and Autumn months; now it's butterflies and pollinating moths and ornamental wasps.
Anyway; here's my garden as it grows.
Verticordia chrysantha - (a ridiculously vivid featherflower that requires no - indeed dies in the presence of - fertiliser, makes a ridiculously long-lasting cut flower, is all sorts of pollinator friendly.)
It's so yellow that you can only really see the 'feather flower' details by taking a shot in the shade. Here you can see the teeny petals and their feathery accoutrements, from which the name 'feather flower' comes from.
The bush in total. So bright it's practically glowing. Feather flowers tend to have a waxy sheen to them, which picks up and multiples the light. When you imagine all those tiny filamentous 'feathers' in the flower picking up sunlight, you get 'halo!flowers.'
This is another Verticordia, but I always forget the name of it. 'Verticordia something red.' Unlike the chrysantha, this one is a different colour (grey-red foliage), and the flowers drop down underneath the branches like little red bells. These are the buds. They don't flower properly until November/December, though it looks like it's gonna start earlier this year.
Acacia ashbyeae in full flower. It's ridiculous. Lol. If bees could wet themselves in paroxysms of delight when they see these shrubs, that's exactly what they do.
The Christmas beetle, or a member of the Anoplognathus family. As I stood in the garden, the first two of the season, it looked like, flew jewel-like into my garden and landed nearby to take advantage of the blooming Acacia. Hopefully we get more and more and more and more and more.
They look like living versions of ammolite.
The groundcover that I ALWAYS forget the name of, in full flower. This is actually recommended as a native grass substitute, but it is extremely slow growing. That said, it's hardy, robust, water-efficient (though not completely drought-proof, it needs watering on the hottest days of the year; but water-efficient enough that I haven't manually watered them for 6/7 months now and they don't care).
In December, it's orange's time to stake out its Emergency-Services vibrancy out in the bushland. In the extraordinary vividity of the world's largest species of mistletoe - the free-standing tree Nuytsia floribunda; known among settlers and 'white people' as the 'Christmas Tree.' Known among local Nyungah as the kanya, a spirit and soul sucking beast of a tree that speaks to its origins as the most far reaching parasitic plant in the world. In swathes, well North of the River, you get Verticordia nitens, the Morrison's feather flower, with an orange so incredible it's brain breaky. Landscapers in the Malvern Springs section of Ellenbrook have taken advantage of their natural predilection to grow here, by planting them everywhere. They look straggly for two months before they flower, and then boom, in full flower, nothing is quite like a Morrison's featherflower for sheer audacity of orange.
Hopefully when I go bushwalking more often, I'll have more photos to share. :) It's kind of going into snake season right now, so I've gotta be careful where I walk. Big dugites sliding around in Koondoola right now!
Anyway; here's my garden as it grows.
Verticordia chrysantha - (a ridiculously vivid featherflower that requires no - indeed dies in the presence of - fertiliser, makes a ridiculously long-lasting cut flower, is all sorts of pollinator friendly.)
It's so yellow that you can only really see the 'feather flower' details by taking a shot in the shade. Here you can see the teeny petals and their feathery accoutrements, from which the name 'feather flower' comes from.
The bush in total. So bright it's practically glowing. Feather flowers tend to have a waxy sheen to them, which picks up and multiples the light. When you imagine all those tiny filamentous 'feathers' in the flower picking up sunlight, you get 'halo!flowers.'
This is another Verticordia, but I always forget the name of it. 'Verticordia something red.' Unlike the chrysantha, this one is a different colour (grey-red foliage), and the flowers drop down underneath the branches like little red bells. These are the buds. They don't flower properly until November/December, though it looks like it's gonna start earlier this year.
Acacia ashbyeae in full flower. It's ridiculous. Lol. If bees could wet themselves in paroxysms of delight when they see these shrubs, that's exactly what they do.
The Christmas beetle, or a member of the Anoplognathus family. As I stood in the garden, the first two of the season, it looked like, flew jewel-like into my garden and landed nearby to take advantage of the blooming Acacia. Hopefully we get more and more and more and more and more.
They look like living versions of ammolite.
The groundcover that I ALWAYS forget the name of, in full flower. This is actually recommended as a native grass substitute, but it is extremely slow growing. That said, it's hardy, robust, water-efficient (though not completely drought-proof, it needs watering on the hottest days of the year; but water-efficient enough that I haven't manually watered them for 6/7 months now and they don't care).
In December, it's orange's time to stake out its Emergency-Services vibrancy out in the bushland. In the extraordinary vividity of the world's largest species of mistletoe - the free-standing tree Nuytsia floribunda; known among settlers and 'white people' as the 'Christmas Tree.' Known among local Nyungah as the kanya, a spirit and soul sucking beast of a tree that speaks to its origins as the most far reaching parasitic plant in the world. In swathes, well North of the River, you get Verticordia nitens, the Morrison's feather flower, with an orange so incredible it's brain breaky. Landscapers in the Malvern Springs section of Ellenbrook have taken advantage of their natural predilection to grow here, by planting them everywhere. They look straggly for two months before they flower, and then boom, in full flower, nothing is quite like a Morrison's featherflower for sheer audacity of orange.
Hopefully when I go bushwalking more often, I'll have more photos to share. :) It's kind of going into snake season right now, so I've gotta be careful where I walk. Big dugites sliding around in Koondoola right now!
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