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Winter Wildflowers

July 28, 2010, 2:26 pm

Another thing that struck us during our bushwalk at Serpentine National Park on the weekend was the profusion of wildflowers. It is still the middle of winter, but there are already masses of wildflowers in full bloom. We saw many varieties of wattle, including the spectacular one above. The low-growing Couch Honeypot below also caught our attention.

 

 

There were plenty of interesting carnivorous plants, including this one which appeared to have eaten a large black ant for breakfast:

 

 

And this one had so many sticky, hairy leaves that it could have consumed a whole army of ants:

 

 

But maybe the most satisfying plant was the orchid shown below. It is a Winter Donkey Orchid and is not a rare plant, but it was the first orchid that we have seen this year. One of our flower guidebooks comments that it is one of the first orchids to flower each season. That certainly sounds right.

 

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4 Comments

  1. Richard Dickins:

    Hi Keith and Susan,

    Just thought I’d let you know that I’m really enjoying your photos from the Serpentine National Park. Something on my ‘to do’ list next time I’m in WA!

    Regards,

    Richard

    July 28, 2010, 8:50 pm

  2. Colin:

    Great pictures!

    Do you have any closeups of the plant in your fourth picture?

    July 29, 2010, 4:52 am

  3. admin:

    Hi Colin,

    We will post some closeups of this plant on today’s blog entry. There were several other interesting carnivorous plants near this one. Send us an email (address on our About page) if you would like us to email photos of them to you.

    Not sure if you saw it, but we had photos of some other carnivorous on our blog on July 9 – in another national park in Perth, Western Australia.

    We saw that you are an expert on carnivorous plants. If you know the names of any that we have featured, send us a comment or email.

    Cheers, Keith

    July 29, 2010, 8:45 am

  4. Keith:

    Hi Richard,

    We’re glad to see that we are attracting some interest in Serpentine National Park. It’s an interesting place and sort of below the radar screen for many people in Perth – rather like the way people in Sydney seem not to appreciate the Blue Mountains as much as visitors do.

    There is a longer walk at Serpentine. We will do that one in future and put up some photos of that as well.

    Regards, Keith and Susan

    July 29, 2010, 11:39 am

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