Ravensthorpe is a “remote”, very small town.
More than 500 kilometres southeast of Perth, its shire covers more than 13,500 square kilometres, but is home to fewer than 2,000 humans; Ravensthorpe is the smaller of its two towns,
No other local government jurisdiction on earth is home to a larger number of eucalypt species!
For endemic flora more generally, it is one of the globe’s “hottest” places, with an incredible number of “endemics” – species which occur (naturally) only there.
Ravensthorpe sits within the Fitzgerald Biosphere – named after “our” planet’s most significant national park for near-coastal, Mediterranean-climate flora.
The northern boundary of Fitzgerald River National Park is just a few kilometres south.
It is no exaggeration to say that Ravensthorpe’s annual wildflower show is one of the world’s finest…& most astonishing.
All photos in this post were taken on a single day, within 30 minutes’ (2WD) driving distance of Ravensthorpe.
The featured image and the next two photos were taken in undulating woodland, several kilometres west of Ravensthorpe.
As is true of most photos in this post, zooming in on/enlarging the image is recommended.
The bright colours are on rain-gleamed caps of a local eucalyptus species’ flowers…fallen to the woodland’s floor, courtesy of cockatoos who had removed the caps in order to feast on the nectar-rich blooms.
Especially in spring, this region is an orchid-lover’s dream-made-real.
The many orchids comprise just a small portion of the local known flora count, which is prodigiously high, and ever-rising.
And, of course, not every wondrous living thing that flourishes on the Shire of Ravensthorpe’s floor (in some of the world’s “poorest” soils) is a flowering plant.
Fungi and lichens are not plants, period:
Pelican Yoga’s next destination is far-distant & very different: Colombia.
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