This Patch of Remnant Scrub

A Sun Orchid

2010-11-15T05:54:00.002+10:30

I lost my password :(

2010-11-14T14:57:00.001+10:30

I found it again :)

Stringybarks

2010-06-20T06:43:00.015+09:30

There are two stringybarks in this patch of scrub.

Eucalyptus baxteri is known locally as the Grey Stringybark and occurs on shallow soils.
It is the tall grey stringy barked tree featured in this photo.

Not so evident here (looking out from the kitchen sink window :)) is the Messmate Stringybar, Eucalyptus obliqua, which is low growing and straggly , at least it is here.

As I drive around the area I am seeing many dead Greys, which locals say is a result of the dry conditions of the last few years.

This year is shaping up well for rain at least, so let's hope they hold their own and even make a few gains, for a while.

These tall trees are flowering right now and the canopy is alive with birds that I am hearing clearly, seeing often, but having lots of trouble photographing.
There are small birds ... silvereyes, thornbills, a range of honey eaters and pardalotes.

The treecreepers spend their time on the trunks, poking around under the bark.
There are larger birds as well; magpies, lorikeets, rosellas, cockatoos, currawongs and kookaburras.

The "hill" really is alive with music and colour
:)

A native grass; not just new to ME.

2010-06-19T19:43:00.005+09:30

"The tall native grass growing along the bank on your block has been identified in Melbourne as Dichelachne hirtella, not even recorded for South Australia... so cherish that one... RB"

More here,

http://www.anbg.gov.au/cgi-bin/apx?taxon_id=64957

and here, which map does seem to have a record of it on the Flerieu Peninsula, hmmmm.
http://www.anbg.gov.au/cgi-bin/map/winmap?taxon_id=64957

http://tropicos.org/name/25557811

http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Dichelachne~hirtella

... still looking ... oh!

GOLD!

http://www.kew.org/data/grasses-db/www/imp02783.htm

Coral Fungi

2010-06-19T09:12:00.005+09:30

Here are three photos of the Coral Fungus I have here.
One photo was taken last year, so it is good to know it is back again.

I believe it is a Ramaria sp, but more than that I do not know ... yet.

Once again, any offers of further help with identifying these gorgeous things would be appreciated.

Frilltop Fungus

2010-06-19T08:52:00.007+09:30

Beautiful, eh?
even without proper names.
:)

Hydnellum peckii in Australia?

2010-06-19T07:59:00.002+09:30

Three weeks ago, while lying flat and trying to photograph this group of fungi, I noticed something bright a little distance away to the upper right.

It was small, only about 1" or 5cm across, but a clear, bright red; very striking.

I have been doing my best to photograph it well, and this is my best effort so far. :)

I love it BUT have not been able to find any references to it in Australia.

The hunt continues.
Any clues would be gratefully received.

Red Cap Fungus, a second one

2010-06-19T07:56:00.000+09:30

While walking home from school the other day Master H and I found three new fungi.
This is one of them.
I believe it is a Russula species.

The other two were NOT redcapped.
The *other* red capped one will be the subject of my next entry IF this works.
:)

Can you tell that I am still experimenting?

More Fungi

2010-06-12T17:14:00.007+09:30

This is going to be a dog's breakfast of (what's the word for "setting things out"?) formatting!

I have another blog for the grandkids* and have just discovered that Flickr posts pictures directly to it, very nicely, but won't to this one
:(

Oh well ... learn as I go.

A friend has suggested that this fungus is a Cortinarius, but neither of us knows more than that.

If anyone else can help with a closer ID I would be grateful.

* http://nanajudesjournal.blogspot.com/

Another Fungus

2010-06-04T06:47:00.002+09:30

and another experiment at posting.
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4060/4664724029_8ef2bf84ef.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4059/4665331810_842fde3418.jpg

Description: a toadstool like form (woody looking stem arising from dead hakea trunk) cap is 7cm across, roundish, dark brown and with a significant depression or "bowl" in the centre. No gills but surface looked a little bit spngey.
Ought I cut it down the centre to have a close look at the inside structures?

One friend has said,

"I'm thinking a form of Polyporus, but not sure from then on in."

Anyone?

A Toadstool

2010-06-02T06:15:00.000+09:30

So who are you looking at?

2010-05-30T08:06:00.012+09:30

We have had several (well at least three) days of rain this week.

White-throated Treecreepers, Cormobates leucophaeus, seem to have appeared at the same time, but I am sure it is a coincidence and that neither is the cause of the other appearing ;p).

So far I have only seen females, as indicated by the orange spot below the eye.

Another "so far" is that I have only ever seen two, as far as I know; the one shown above this past week and the one shown at left, this same time last year.

That was also the first time I had ever seen one, although I then realised I had heard it before and been trying to identify the call for some time.

They seem to be very curious creatures, investigating any changes.

I had placed a possum box up in a tree and within an hour of the Treecreeper showing up it had investigated it, including popping inside and out again several times.

I wonder if they nest in hollows or whether they are drawn to any kind of hollow in their search for food. These two certainly seemed drawn to check out any little holes as they crept up the trees' trunks.

I must read some more of my books (and internet links) and report my findings; with any luck I might see for myself from my glorified bird hide aka my little cottage in the bush.

More info here
www.birdsinbackyards.net/finder/display.cfm?id=132

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-throated_Treecreeper

Pick Me! Pick Me!

2010-05-09T05:11:00.002+09:30

I wonder what it is for you?

For me it is books.

All my life books have been my ... what ... let's say most valued, most loved, most enjoyed ... retreat? Whatever.

My mother used to tell of my having swapped my own Christmas present of a doll with my cousin's, whose was a book on that Christmas morning when we were both about 8. I should have taken that early indicator of a career choice more seriously perhaps?

When we returned to live in Australia from North America, we went to Melbourne which was a city new to us. We determined to explore it and the surrounding country as assiduously as we had that of our overseas home cities.

Two places I remember for helping me learn about Australian native plants in those early years back "home"; the first was Maranoa Gardens* and the second was a tiny book shop in Greensborough (when it was still a little village) run by a lady called Betwyn Pearce.

We lived In Melbourne long enough to start our family and build a home on a beautiful 1 acre bush block, which we treasured; classic dry sclerophyll.

And my learning continued.

It was at that time that friends gave us a book gift voucher for Betwyn's shop and in we went.
We chose "Shrubs and trees for Australian gardens" by Lord, Ernest E. (Ernest Edward), 1899-1970.

Betwyn also encouraged us to join the Society for Growing Australian Plants, which we duly did. What a resource it was and is, no longer "just" books, journals and field trips, but the marvellous internet!
http://asgap.org.au/

I still have all my early books, which are of course hopelessly out of date, but remain great favourites, rather like "comfort food" providing links with the past good times.

Now that I am back in South Australia again, and on my own, I often browse through my old Kelly's "Eucalypts", Nicholson's "Orchids" and my "Black's Flora" volumes, bought new from the Adelaide Botanic Gardens Herbarium for 7/6 each (75cents :)) almost 40 years ago.

It will be good to get home and get into them again, but in the meantime I am enjoying seeing New Zealand and its native plants , in the Coromandel area this weekend.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coromandel,_New_Zealand

Time to be on our way again ... cyaz

*Maranoa Gardens link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maranoa_Gardens

Australian Native Plants.

2010-05-08T00:26:00.006+09:30

No matter how improbable it seems, I first became aware of Australia's native plants as a 20 year old foreigner living in North America; Vancouver, BC, for our first 3 years.

We visited places in the Rocky Mountains, like Whistler National Park (before thre was ANY development beyond rudimentary campsites poked into the forest, Vancouver Island and the Okanagan Valley especially to see "wildflowers", such as the dogwoods.

I learned about the Dogwood being British Columbia's State Floral Emblem and yet still, somehow, the fundamental distinctions of what constituted wildflowers and indigenous plants escaped me.

On our first annual vacation we travelled south down the west coast to California, then striking inland, for the return trip.

In California, we found Eucalypts! We made an unscheduled and emotional stop, got out of the car and could not resist touching them, hugging them in fact.
How home sick we were!

I had no idea which gums they were, indeed, might not then have realised that there were many, but I recall them being smooth-trunked and smelling of home. Thinking back, I would now guess that they were Lemon Scented Gums, E citriodora.

I still did not have any idea about indigenous plants, much less about such notions as "habitat".

After 3 years in Canada we moved to Texas for a year, and yet again it was the wildflowers that caught my attention.

One afternoon, while remarking on the bluebonnets in bloom along the highways, a fellow Australian spoke of how she hadn't really appreciated our own native plants until she had left home.

I recall not understanding what she meant ... and so she explained about bottlebrushes and wattles ... and gums.
At least I recognised those, but it was not until we returned to Australia and lived in Melbourned that I made the same efforts to learn about our own local plants (and joined SGAP) that I began to get the picture!

_Years_ later I returned the the Eyre Peninsula, SA, my own home country, and drove through miles of flowering Hakea francisiana before the penny dropped.

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=Hak

As a child our gardens were extraordinary things, swept bare ground with patches of flowers and shrubs, "hardy" exotics, pampered with bucketed water that was left over after ablutions ... water we really could not spare; geraniums, hibiscus, statice, irises, bridal creeper; and in sheltered corners between the house and the tanks we cosseted precious annuals like snapdragons, linaria and wallflowers, and when we got disourgaged in really dry years, the succulents lasted the distance.

The list could go on but it did not ever (so far as I can recall) include ANY local plant within the house yards of any of my own or my extended family's places.

All that time the Grevilleas and Hakeas and such were completely invisible to me; in fact the only native plant I recall being valued were the quandongs, which we walked miles to collect.

http://www.tinyurl.com.au/78b

Quandong collecting, like going mushrooming, was a major extended family effort.
2 or three familes would meet at one of the farms and set out for the day.

The large-wheeled wicker baby pram was put to service as we walked miles, filling it with the whole fruit. On reaching home we all peeled the flesh off the stones and laid it out on sheets in the sun until they dried and tipped the stones into a heap by the fence, to be used later in making chinese Checkers games.

The red flesh dried into dark plum-coloured cruchy pieces that were stored in pillow cases and flour bags in the linen press.

This year, 60 years later, I am enjoying preparing and eating dried quandongs again, courtesy of a chance encounter on the internet with a person willing to collect them for me.

This is roughbarked's photo taken them as he prepared them.
Great memories.
:)

So much learned and so much still to learn, but mostly I feel gratitude for having learned this much to date and being in a position to enjoy the geautiful block I now call home

The Stellar Quilt

2010-05-05T14:55:00.004+09:30

Hi Harry and Mary (and Jade too, if you are around),

A friend of mine makes quilts.

Actually, a few friends of mine make quilts.

This is a quilt made by one of them; her internet name is Purple :)

She called it "Life is ... "
When I was about your age my Dad used to sing a song called "Life is just a bowl of cherries", and I think Toni might have been thinking of that song when she named her quilt.

Because Andrew and Midori are such cherry people, I wrote to Purple and bought this quilt for their (then) kitten.

That is how you come to be holding it, so I could send her a photo to show her that we had received it.

Now it is here in Auckland, just outside my bedroom door, in Stella's little house.

I still love it.
:)
Aee you another day,
NanaJude

PS One of my favourite silly authors wrote, "If life is a bowl of cherries, what am I doing here in the pits?"

Mushrooms!

2010-04-22T19:26:00.003+09:30

Yes!
It was autumn for just a few days.

I don't even know the proper names for the most ordinary of the fungi.
:(

*stops being helpless and looks on the internet*

Field Mushroom (Agaricus campestris)

Short and Sweet ...

2010-04-22T12:36:00.002+09:30

... if that was autumn, it was very nice, thanks , but too short.

28C here right now and heading for 30C, according to the forecasters.

That which was soft and damp underfoot yesterday is crunching today.

I think I won't light my little covered (and so VERY ) dry patches of bush until I return from New Zealand.

I am heading off tomorrow morning for some time with our two "plant and food" researchers.
While there I will be figuring a way to proceed with this blog.
I have photos of many birds and plants and reviewing them will give me something to do when I am indoors.

I'll try writing about my time there on my "NanaJude's Journal" for the grandkids.
I let that slide while they were without internet access ... no more. :)
http://nanajudesjournal.blogspot.com/

Classic Autumn Days

2010-04-20T11:45:00.000+09:30

Our weather has moved from warm-to-hot (and dry) to cool and cloudy, with sunshine and showers taking turns.

The change is very welcome.

About a month ago we had our first good rain of the season, 40mm, which prompted new growth on everything.

Blossoms always catch my eye, but it is great to see the fresh new foliage on the trees and even the smaller things like the Yacca, or Grass Trees (Xanthorrhoea semiplana ssp semiplana) trees and theTrigger Plants (Stylidium graminifolium) .

Above is a general view of the Oyster Bay Pines (Callitris rhomboidea) area and below is detail of their foliage, a lovely soft texture and colour.

Tiny things are difficult to spot with so much active growth underfoot, as well as so many years of accumulated leaf litter. However ...yesterday I found a further 11 Parsons Bands Orchids in bloom.

"Parsons Bands" or "Autumn Rabbit" Orchid

2010-04-18T18:09:00.000+09:30

Yesterday I found several tiny terrestrial orchids, known as Parsons Bands, flowering beneath the Oyster Bay pines (Callitris rhomboidea).

The 8 flowers I saw were all less than 2cm across and stood between 10 and 15cm tall.

These are generally found in this district from April through May, according to Mr Bob Bates, who has been helping me learn about them and has undertaken a survey of plants on the block.

More information here, on South Australia's online "herbarium" fact sheets.

http://www.flora.sa.gov.au/cgi-bin/texhtml.cgi?form=speciesfacts&family=&genus=Eriochilus&species=cucullatus&iname=&submit=Display

Here it is :)

2010-04-18T15:36:00.000+09:30

I live on a small patch of scrub in the Adelaide Hills district of South Australia.

Because of its shape and the general "poorness" of it (dry and exposed), the ridge it occupies above Aldgate Creek was not considered worth fencing for grazing.
As a direct result, it retains much of the original vegetation.

Here is an aerial view of the entire block.

It is a long, narrow and triangular, bounded on the two long sides by made roads and on the third by a dry stone wall built by the neighbour.

North is to the right.

Having lived here for 16 months now, I am beginning to appreciate the enormous variety of plant and animal life - and my unreliable memory.

Those two factors have me determined to learn to record the life on this little patch of scrub as accurately as I can, if not as comprehensively as a biologist might.

It is very much a "learn as I go" project, but anything has to be better than what has happened to date, which has been very much occasional emails to friends accompanied by a photo and statements like, "I think I saw this much earlier last year" or "I think this orchid is new to me" and then, on looking back through photos, finding that I had actually photographed it last Autumn and then forgotten it.

This blog is for me and my education and enjoyment, but if others should find it and enjoy it too, that would be a bonus.
So, to any who drop by, a hearty welcome.