Fairies' Aprons

I'm glad no one was watching me when I spotted a plant flowering in the bush. I confess to doing a little jig and a yahoo.

I've been gradually surveying a particular area of Victoria for about ten years now, looking for plants in an area about 10 km by 14 km (a degree) east of Heywood in the state's west. It's a diverse area with creeks, sandy heath, woodland and forest, and volcanic stone areas. Over that time I've found a few interesting species of plants and built up my knowledge of the plants that are common.

And I have a list of plants that should be in the area but I haven't found them yet.Top of the list was a beautiful little carnivorous plant called Fairies' Aprons Utricularia dichotoma. The plants have modified stems that trap small organisms. It grows in damp and wet heathy areas and they tend to be the places I avoid in summer because I worry about snakes when I'm by myself. And we're not always here at the right time of the year.

Fairies' Aprons Utrcularia dichotoma

Yesterday I wasn't looking for it because it's January (normally very dry but this year everything here is still green and moist) and the plant flowers in spring and early summer. But there it was, a single plant, looking beautiful in the middle of a muddy section of a bush track in the Annya forest at Milltown.

Fairies' Aprons are probably widespread in this area as they are in other areas of Australia - it's just that I had never found them where I expected them to be. Hence the jig.

A humble beauty

A pretty but common plant can get a bit tiresome when really you want to see something else. Bent Goodenia Goodenia geniculata is brightly coloured and an interesting shape but it's really common and I keep checking to make sure it's not a Spur Velleia Velleia paradoxa or a different Goodenia.

Yay! Success! Today I was walking in a damp heathy woodland and found the beautiful little Swamp Goodenia Goodenia humilis in patches. I've seen it before but it was lovely to see it again.

A scrubby sheoak

Re the previous post. As mentioned, the Scrub Sheoak Allocasuarina paludosa often comes in two varieties, male and female. This photo of the female shrub was taken last Spring.

Fooled again

It was marked on my map as Sheoak Hill, in Annya State Forest. I'd been through the area but couldn't recall seeing any sheoaks. The Drooping Sheoak is a tree that's hard to miss, its beautiful drooping branches and distinctive 'foliage' are easy to recognise. I thought that maybe the timber cutters had cleaned them all out, but they usually leave the sheoaks in favour of the eucalypts.

So I went to have a look...and found Scrub Sheoaks Allocasuarina paludosa. In amongst the Silver Banksias Banksia marginata and the Beaked Hakeas Hakea rostrata were little sheoak shrubs scarcely a metre high.

The species name paludosa means 'swamp growing', and I do find them growing in very damp sandy areas east of Heywood but in the Annya forest they grow in dampish sand. Mostly they are dioecious, the male and female plants separate. And the female plants are absolutely covered in cones. You need a good hand lens with you to identify the species sometimes, and the thing to look at is the leaf pattern - the tiny whorls of points at the intersections of the branches. In the second photo below you can see the leaves, in the blurry background. The name Allocasuarina is because the branchlets are supposed to resemble Cassowary feathers. OK. I've met a Cassowary but didn't study it's feathers too closely - I was more concerned that it didn't attack me with its feet.

Summer beauties

Two more pale summer flowers. Woolly Rice-flower Pimelea octophylla grows in woodland on sandy soil. It's a beautiful shrub, with nodding flowers. You can see why it's called 'woolly', and the scientific name refers to the eight bracts behind the flowers. The second one, with very pale pink trumpets, grows in damp areas. It's an Austral Brooklime Gratiola peruviana. Both were growing in Annya State Forest north of Heywood.

A surprise in more ways than one

The Annya State Forest north of Heywood is a favourite patch of bush, and I visit it every time we go down to our farm nearby. It's a sandy heathy woodland, rich in flora, and even though I've explored parts of it many times it still has the capacity to surprise me.

Last weekend I found three species of plants in 'my' patch that I've never seen there before – maybe I've just never been there when they're flowering.

Most colourful and impressive was the Lax Marsh-flower Villarsia umbricola, growing in a very damp and swampy area, the yellow flowers held well above the leaves. This plant only grows in the south-west of Victoria and across the border in the south-east of South Australia.

The second new plant was Pale Grass-lily Caesia parviflora var. parviflora. It too was flowering, tiny pale flowers, and would be easy to miss if not in flower because its leaves are grass-like.

The third was an orchid. I was wandering along a track in the bush on my way back to the car, tired because I'd been out all morning taking photos on a hot day. I spotted a late flowering orchid, the common but pretty Pink Fingers Caladenia carnea, and grabbed a quick photo without troubling to do it properly. The photo below is one of Pink Fingers taken on another day.

When I looked at the (blurry) photo on the screen later in the day I realised that the 'Pink Fingers' was in fact a Black-tongue Caladenia Caladenia congesta, a plant I'd never seen before and in fact not often seen growing in the wild. So, I got in the car and drove the 15 km back to have another look. (Yes, I'm worried about climate change, but sometimes I have to break my own rules about petrol consumption and greenhouse gas.) I found the original plant and another one nearby that I'd missed seeing first time. This time I made sure I got a good photo of the beautiful orchid.

Now I'm back home in Geelong but I'd love to be back in the Annya forest to see if there are any more surprises.