Photos - Flowering plants
For seedlings and juvenile forms, go to this link.
This is cunjevoi Alocasia brisbanensis, a native relative of the taro plant that grows in swampy areas. The photo was taken in March, when the bright red berries are bursting out from the surrounding sheath. These are very attractive to fruit-eating birds and soon get picked off.
During the exceptionally wet period of 2010-11, seedlings of this plant appeared on places well away from water, but many of them will presumably die off in drier years.
Like several other plants, both weeds and natives, the juice of the plant is poisonous - don't rub your eyes after handling this plant!
Half of the 100 or so species in the orchid genus Thelymitra are native to Australia, and this one, T. pauciflora, is the most widespread. On our site, it grows where the original topsoil was removed years ago during the construction of the nearby freeway, leaving a poorly-drained clay subsoil. This flower was caught while it opened briefly in a sunny spell - sometimes the flowers never open and they self-pollinate within the bud. This requirement for sun is the reason for their common name.
Blue is a rare colour in the orchid family and, although this species is one of the least spectacular of the sun orchids, its blue(ish) colour is a small claim to fame.
The bangalow palm Archontophoenix cunninghamiana produces huge numbers of red, marble-sized fruit throughout the summer. The thin red flesh around the seed inhibits germination, but if you want to grow seedlings, there is no need to go to the trouble of removing the flesh. Bower birds, cat birds and magpies love to eat the fruit and it passes though their gut quite quickly. So the cleaned seed can be gathered from the ground under where they perch.
The seedlings of the bangalow are a favorite food of cattle. Wherever the banks of Ourimbah Creek have been grazed this palm has disappeared, which is a pity, because its roots are a wonderful protection against erosion.
Fortunately it is easy to re-establish once the creek banks are fenced to keep cattle out. The clean seeds just need to be gathered from under the remaining forest stands of the palm. They can be stored in damp moss until you are ready to push them into holes wherever you want them to grow. They happily withstand flooding and within 15 years, they will themselves be fruiting and producing more regeneration.
And here's one result, 10 years after direct seeding.
This is the Christmas orchid Calanthe australasica, whose large, aspidistra-like leaves are adapted to gathering what little light reaches the forest floor. It flowers in midsummer and this one was photographed in late December. This species used to be grouped with superficially similar orchids under the name C. triplicata. More recently, Jones and Clements (Australian Orchid Research 5, 2006: 4-8) have split this into a number of species that occur from Australia to India, with C. australasica being confined to eastern Australia
There is some mystery regarding the natural pollinator of this orchid. It has a long spur which provides nectar. This and the white flowers suggest that a moth may perform pollination at night. Natural stands here seem to set abundant seed in some years, but almost none in others.
A day or so after pollination, the flowers bend downwards, as four have done here. Then the ovary begins to swell to form a pod, as in the flower at the base of the spike. Pods continue to grow for another nine months, until mid September, when the pods split longitudinally and gradually release thousands of tiny seeds which float away on the wind. By then, the new flower spikes have already begun to push out of the rosette of leaves. This continued growth throughout the year demands moisture and during drought years the plants may not flower or, if they do, not produce seed. Even if seed is produced, few years seem to be moist enough to support many seedlings. However, looking at the size of some colonies of the orchid, I would suspect that an individual plant could survive for around 100 years, so that a high rate of reproduction may not be necessary.
These are seeds gathered from under a large yellow ash tree, Emmenosperma alphitonioides. In undisturbed forest it grows as an individual tree surrounded by different species rather than in groups. Few trees of this species survive in the catchment of Ourimbah Creek. It only becomes noticeable when its orange fruits cover the high branches, and that is perhaps only one year in three. These seeds came from the one tree we have been able to locate and, until we began to propagate it, the species may have been on the verge of extinction, at least as far as Ourimbah Creek is concerned. Botanist Mark Robinson located two more specimens that survive on Rocky Creek, a small stream that joins Ourimbah Creek downstream of our site.
The huge leaves of the native tamarind, Diploglottis cunninghamii. As the tree gets larger, so its leaves become smaller until they are about the size of those on a red cedar.
This tree is in the same family as the litchee (Sapindaceae) and its fruits resemble those of the litchee in their structure. The edible (but very acid!) flesh is wrapped around a shiny seed and the whole is protected by a dry husk. While seedlings are hardly common, they do appear regularly, scattered up to a kilometer or so away from fruiting trees.
This is the grass flag, Libertia paniculata, flowering in September. The flowers are followed by abundant seed in November. Seedlings are easy to raise, so please don't be tempted to dig this attractive plant up from the wild.