Hi all, I hope you and yours are doing well. Here in Western Australia spring has sprung, and we have had a mixture of rain and cool nights, and then a burst of summer sun.
I hope you enjoyed my last post from our recent camping trip with our friends, and Meeting a Numbat and other Wildlife in the Dryandra Woodland, Western Australia. As promised I am back to share some wildflowers from Dryandra with you.
Dryandra Woodland National Park, located just a couple of hours south of Perth, and north east of our home in the South West of Western Australia, has a several walking tracks ranging from 1km to 12.5 km, so there is plenty of opportunity to see wildflowers, especially during spring.
Spread over 27,000 hectares, there is a mixture of woodlands in Dryandra, ranging from marri, jarrah, wandoo, sheoak and mallet trees, and soil types creating environments for over 850 species of plants. With less than 7%of the original vegetation remaining the the western wheatbelt, Dryandra is of critical conservation importance. We camped at Gnaala Mia campground, so our first walk was along the 3km walk trail that circles the Gnaala Mia campground. If you recall in my last post, we saw numbats and echidnas along this trail, as well as wildflowers.
Please note I am not a botanist, but I will do my best to identify the plants.
Below is the Pink Coneflower - Isopogon crithmifolius - a shrub which grows to about 1.8 metes tall with gorgeous showy pink flowers August to November.
Below are three examples of different Petrophiles. The one on the right is Tangled Petrophile - Petrophile divaricata.
Below is the Golden Dryandra - Banksia (Dryandra) bobilis. There are 92 species of Dryandra, all entirely endemic to the south-west of Western Australia. In 2007 the species of Dryandra was abosorbed into the family of Banksia.
In the collage below you can see 4 stages - the flower forming, known as the perianth. As the flower opens the styles detach and curl or loop outwards. The final stage is a pincushion look.
The Golden Dryandra is a tall shrub to four metres tall, and its flowers are up to 50 millimetres in diameter. Old leaves persist giving the shrub a brown, shaggy appearance. The shrubs can form dense impenetrable stands which provide safe havens for woylies to nest in. I think they look very sculptural and somewhat prehistoric.
I believe this is another of the Dryandras - possibly Pingle - Banksia (Dryandra) squarrosa. You will note the prickly leaves that are a feature of Dryandras and Banksias. Hence why the bushes are impenetrable! There are a lot of prickly bushes in the Australian bush.
Below is Parrot Bush - Banksia (Dryandra) sessilis. The Noongar peoples know the plant as budjan or butyak. Below you can see the stages of the flower forming.
I believe this to be the King Dryandra - Banksia (Dryandra) proteoides. The large flower heads are surrounded by reddish-orange bracts which remain on the branches for many years. I'm sharing this photo that I took on a trip to Dryandra in June 2023.
Below is Styphelia acervata (kick bush) a low prostrate ground hugging plant which features stiff, tough foliage with sharp tips on the end of each leaf.
The plant produces small berries (karlburi) that are a traditional bush tucker food. The local Noongar people (who call the plant Cadgeegurrup) traditionally use a stick to carefully pick through the sharp leaves to harvest the fruit, however early settlers used their boots to kick the flat clumps over to expose the underside. Not very eco friendly!
I thought I had a photo of the whole plant, but found that I don't.
Below you can see two types of Quandongs - on the left the Desert / Sweet Quandong - Santalum acuminatum - with the broader leaf. On the right with the narrow leaf is the Bitter Quandong - Santalum murrayanum. Both are parasitic plants belonging to the Sandlewood family. Both are also edible, but the Sweet Quandong has a much better flavour. I have made jam with them in the past, and they are delicious. The green ones in this picture are not yet ripe. Trust me you don't want to sample the Bitter Quandongs - yes very bitter even when ripe!
Below is the Painted Lady - Gompholobium scabrum. This slender shrub grows to about 1.5 metres tall. The beautiful pea flowers range in colour from pink to mauve and flowers July to October. We saw this bush on the way to the Lol Grey walk trail.
Below is Sandplain Poison - Gastrolobium microcarpum - a bushy shrub to 1.5 metres tall which flowers August to October. You see them all over Dryandra. It contains fluoroacetate, which is highly toxic to introduced mammals, such as cats and foxes, but has little effect on native mammals. This toxin has been manufactured synethetically and is called 1080, and has been used to reduce numbers of introduced foxes in Dryandra under the Western Shield program. You can read more here - Australian Geographic - the plant that saved the numbats
Below are a few wild orchids. We found the best place to find them was on the flat grasslands around the old rail formation on Congelin Siding walk. There is also a camping area in this area.
Below you can see clockwise from top left - Primrose spider orchid, one of the red spider orchids, jug orchid, possibly the Blue Beard orchid, Little Laughing Leek Orchid, one of the cowslip orchids, a group of cowslips, Sugar orchid, and in the centre, my favourite the Lemon Scentred Sun Orchid also known as the Vanilla Orchid.
Lemon Scented Sun Orchid also known as the Vanilla Orchid - Thelymitra antennifera. Flowering September to early October, it is a common orchid from Shark Bay to the Great Australian Bight, and inland to the Goldfields. Only 2-3 cm wide, I love their little faces which look like, to me, like they are wearing sun glasses.
We had never seen the Primrose Spider orchid before - Caladenia xantha. It is always lovely to see something new. At first we thought we had discovered the rare Lemon Spider Orchid - Caladenia luteola - but were advised it was actually the Primrose Spider orchid. No matter - it was a special find for us.
And those flowers I shared last week? I believe these to be 3 varieties of Hakea - a genus of about 150 species of shrubs and small trees in the Proteaceae family and closely related to Banksias and Grevillias. I am thinking as they were growing near the Arboretum, they were probably planted. But so gorgeous don't you think? More info here - Dryandra Aboretum
If you would like an overview of Dryandra, the 23km Darwinia Drive is a good one to follow, with information boards at five pull-over bays, with short walks. The information bays highlight the different soil types and plants of Dryandra. It is a good gravel road suitable for 2WD, and easily done in a morning or afternoon, but why not slow down and take a picnic!
One of the walks we did was the Woylie Walk, a 5.5km circuit trail starting at the Old Mill Dam picnic area. The walk went through a variety of woodlands of wandoo, powderbark, kongan heath, jarrah, rock sheoak and mallet plantations.
The ground beneath mallet trees is unusually bare. The bark has a 55% tannin content - one of a group of chemicals that prevents other plants germinating, resulting in bare earth under the trees. This is known as allelopathy which reduces competition for nutrients, water and light. The trees dense canopy screens out sunlight, further inhibiting undergrowth. The bare earth also inhibits bush fires.
Honestly there are so many wildflower species in Dryandra - over 850 in fact - it would take me forever to photograph, identify and share them with you. But below are a few more. The gorgeous red one in the centre is the Grey-leaved Bottlebrush - Beaufortia incana
I hope you have enjoyed coming to Dryandra with me.
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