A new page

My trusty friend, the Nikon Coolpix 995, is out of action because I carelessly dropped it. I'm told it may not be a fatal condition but because it's Christmas, and even camera repairers take holidays, I have to wait to find out. So there was the horrible possibility of going away for two weeks without a camera!! So I bought a Sony W55.

I haven't had a chance to play with it much yet but the photo (above) of the grevillea in my garden is very sharp so I think all will be well. I'm looking forward to tesing it out. Happy Christmas.

A productive hybrid?

Fifteen years ago I planted Grevillea 'Winpara Gem' in my garden. This grevillea is a hybrid, a cross between G. olivacea and G. thelemanniana. It has flowered prolifically every year and has never set seed. I thought that was because it's a hybrid. So why has it set seed this year? The bush is covered in fruit, beautiful little shapes with long tails. I wonder if the seed will be viable and if so which parent will it follow?

A rescued plant

When my daughter moved interstate a year ago some (OK, a lot) of her stuff ended up in storage in our house and garage. And I also inherited her pot plants, including delightful Chocolate Lillies and a Flax-lily. She had rescued the Flax-lily from a housing development site, legitimately, because it's a Threatened Species. Dianella amoena Matted Flax-lily grows in grassland and grassy woodlands in the Latrobe Valley, Gippsland Plains and around Melbourne and is under constant threat from land clearing, urban development and grazing.

'My' Flax-lily is currently flowering beautifully, and seems to thrive on greywater. I'm wondering whether to plant it in the garden but in its natural state it can spread quite a bit so I'm hesitant.

Last summer I caught these two butterflies from the Skipper family, Yellow-banded Darts Ocybadistes walkeri , 'in the act' on a leaf of the Flax-lily. In fact, the Flax-lily is one of the food plants of the caterpillar of this species. As you can see, the butterflies are tiny. This particular species can be identifed by the little hook on the tip of the antenna and, in common with other Skippers, often bask in sunlight with the forewings open over the body and the forewings held flat (see second photo below).

Reference: Geelong Naturalist, May 2007, p 3

Just bluffing

It seemed that I'd chosen the wrong time to go out to the Bannockburn Cemetery (see previous post), but this threatening cloud came and went without leaving a drop of rain. I haven't absorbed enough information from my new cloud book yet to be able to identify it. (Did you know that clouds have scientific names like plants and animals? It could be a Cumulus congestus, for example.) It was good to see the Richard's Pipit on the gravel road, the White-necked Heron on the dam bank, and hear the Stubble Quails calling from the wheat crop. It's summer.