Flannel Flower Gloat Moment

The photo I posted here a while back of the flannel flower (Actinotus helianthi) I'm growing has been chosen for today's Botany Photo of the Day published by UBC Botanical Garden and Centre for Plant Research.

Which is nice.

Just as jolly is that I've sold my first photo. The Herbarium had an art exhibition over recent weeks, "Our Hidden Talents", to which the staff were encouraged to contribute. I entered four photos, and someone liked this one enough to part with ready cash for it. Heck.


I took this photo, "After the Fire", in February this year, while on the NSW Herbarium Plant Science Internship's field trip to the NSW Central Coast. It's a burnt-out tree in Awaba State Forest.

Sandstone Sanctuary

The sandstone rock platform that runs along one side of our property is proving to be a wondrously diverse and relatively undisturbed piece of habitat. As the weather warms up, I'm discovering increasing numbers of plant species, which is such a joy. This is where I found the Cryptostylis subulata I recently blogged about, and there are also Lomandra longifolia, Lomandra filiformis, Lomandra obliqua, Gahnia sp., and a range of monocots I'm yet to identify.

Yesterday, looking out the bathroom window, I noticed a Stylidium productum in flower!



Some while back, when we were still living in Turramurra, I had the same species growing in a pot. It resulted in a far better photo (which was published on Botany Photo of the Day), but having it growing wild is much more satisfying.


An utter favourite of mine is Caustis flexuosa, also known, appropriately enough, as Curly Wigs. I'd love to try propagating it, although I hear it's not an easy task.


(Of course, instead of taking photos and blogging, right now I should be studying for a uni exam on Monday, but to be honest, my brain is in a state of jangling anticipation: today is election day. I've been out to vote and there is nothing to do but wait now to see what the rest of Australia's decided. The tension is excruciating! Please, please, please, let this be the last day of the wretched Howard Government....)

Flicking flowers, Fire and the Future

Sorry. That level of alliteration really is quite unforgivable.

The first F relates to my photo of a Stylidium productum flower I posted here previously. It's just been published on Botany Photo of the Day, here. Thanks, Daniel! If you're into plants and you haven't yet subscribed to BPoD, then you should. Most of the photos there put mine to shame, but I'm pretty happy with those Daniel's published: Dendobium speciosum and Telopea speciosissima 'Wirrimbirra White'.

The slogan of Botany Photo of the Day is "In Science, beauty. In beauty, science. Daily." I love that. It distills what Dawkins talks about in Unweaving the Rainbow.

F #2 is fire. As I was travelling up to the Central Coast on a Herbarium internship field trip, we passed the bushfires that were besetting Mount Kuring-gai, less than a kilometre from our new home. This is a photo taken on 22 January, looking towards Sydney from Staples Lookout on the Kariong-Woy Woy Road, showing the smoke from the fire.



Such an ominous sight, and I hated being away from my family while we all worried.

We visited Mount Kuring-gai yesterday, to see the damage. While from the ridge you can see a lot of blackened damage from spot fires, the areas around the houses have only been browned by back-burning by the Rural Fire Service. It's distressing to know that the fire was caused either by an arsonist or by an idiot careless with a cigarette butt, but fortunately the fire near us wasn't too intense or extensive. Already there are signs of regeneration: lomandra appearing from the earth, xanthorrhoea leaves exploding from charred stumps. By the time we move in, there will be a lot of action. By the time the fire was controlled, a total of over 1,000 hectares were burnt. Hopefully most of the animals got out of the way....

But I'm afraid I'm not able to post any more photos from my Herbarium exploits yet. So many photos, so much to write, so little time! I'll catch up as soon as I can.

And the final F is my future. My experiences at the Herbarium have thoroughly crystallised my plans for the rest of my working life. A while ago I realised that horticulture wasn't going to be enough for me. Much as I love the practical stuff, I was craving more knowledge and science than my courses were designed to provide. Now I know where I want to go, and it's into botany and biodiversity.

So in the second half of this year, I'm going to go back to Macquarie University, my alma mater, and start studying for a B.Sc in Biodiversity and Conservation. I'll be studying part-time, so am going to look for part-time work in hort/plant science to pay for it. (It's a shock to the system for a girl who did her Arts/Law degrees during the halcyon post-Whitlam era, when tertiary education was entirely publicly-funded. Now, it's expensive. Yikes.)

Catch up soon!

Cheers,

Margaret

Website changes

One of the reasons I started this blog was because I'd had a bit of a whinge on Botany Photo of the Day about Googlepages' 100 photo limit for websites hosted there. A kind soul at BPotD, MMW, suggested that I join Flickr to house my photos and use this place. Sage advice indeed.

Now I can put new photos on Flickr so they can be accessed from the website, and this blog will allow me to have actual conversations (I hope!) rather than just having my site transmit itself out into the ether with no visible response.

Something I plan to use this blog for is to let people know of changes to the website. So now, I happily announce that I've updated the Great TAFE Pond Project.

Last week, my Pruning and Planting class began clearing the areas around the ponds. We're now talking about what plants should go in. Needless to say, I'm eager to include indigenous species that will provide appropriate habitat for frogs. I'm preparing a list of suggested species.... Lots of Lomandra, Dianella, sedges and rushes, as well as ground cover that frogs are happy to traverse.