[Photos] Koondoola and wildflowers.

[moonvoice]

There was a massive fire earlier this year that devastated the Koondoola bushland,
and unfortunately it hasn't been recovering very well at all.
Still, during our hike, we did find some signs of endemic and local herbaceous natives,
even amongst the carpet of wild gladiolus.
People often love the latter, but it's an invasive pest, and can be legally pulled up.


Podotheca gnaphaliodes along Alexander Drive. Also known as 'golden long-heads.'






These are only in about peak flower for about a week, before they start to fade (though they do yellow everything up for about three weeks). We caught them in peak flower easily, since we have wild ones in our own back yard.









Koondoola devastated by fire - It looks green, but the shrub understorey is virtually gone and almost all of the grasses are feral weeds, choking out natives.





Native wild violets alongside feral wild gladiolus





A carpet of wild gladiolus





Home between two branches









A small stand of catspaw - related to the kangaroo paw.





Anigozanthus menziesii - Kangaroo Paw





Burchardia bairdiae - Milkweed





Dampiera alata





Myriocephalus helichrysoides





Rainbow Lorikeets - both colourful and very noisy.

Comments

[moonvoice]

Australia has the most fragile topsoil in the world, sometimes thinner than a couple of centimetres (a single inch), so all hooved animals wreak simply too much damage / erosion to be feasible in the elimination of weeds. It's also why feral hooved animals are such a problem. In places where land is over-grazed by stock, salinity goes up, erosion goes up, and it can take decades for the land to recover.

It's strange you know, on the one hand, the plants can survive fires and blistering heat, but it's also a land of immense fragility. Weeds / feral creatres / hooved animals are simply devastating. The fact is that every animal that evolved here naturally have soft feet, not hooved feet, to work in harmony with the fragile environment they were grazing off (I think the exception is the pig-footed bandicoot which, if you google them, were exceptionally fragile themselves).