Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
Full disclosure: I do not know the name of the featured plant; in this instance the “UFO” is an “unidentified flowering organism” – unidentified by yours truly, at least.
The relevant “Hollywood” does sit within a wealthy city, but not in L.A.; Perth’s Hollywood Reserve is adjacent to the “far end” (i.e. furthest distant from main entry) of Perth’s Karrakatta Cemetery.
i think that this post’s hero is a member of the Proteaceae Family.
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You are looking at the flower head of one of several Melaleuca species that are commonly known as “honey myrtles”.
The Melaleuca genus has more than 300 members, most of them endemic to Australia; it also includes all of the bottlebrushes and paperbarks, plus some of the so-called tea-trees.
The genus is part of the Myrtle family.
I am pretty sure that the picture shows Melaleuca nesophila, a WA-endemic which naturally occurs only in the Albany-Esperance region.
It is however, a popular garden plant, commonly found in Australian gardens and parks.
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Very often, much more is going on within a single flower than is readily apparent to an observing human’s naked eye.
The deployment of a long or macro lens will often yield a surprise – sometimes lovely, sometimes startling.
If you zoom in on/enlarge the image below you will see two beetles.
They are at/near the top of the photo’s most prominent pistil – the white one, in sharp focus.
For a more “macabre” experience, look at the munching/nectar-sipping young animals that have “invaded” the very heart of two of the three flowers in the featured image, above.
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Southwest WA’s black cockatoos are highly sociable and very intelligent.
They are intermittently LOUD, but rarely aggressive/disputatious.
Breeding pairs usually “bond” permanently, and both parents are remarkably attentive to their offspring.
When it comes to enjoying their food, very evidently – both the “capturing” and the consumption thereof – these birds have few peers.
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One of life’s recurrent pleasures in southwest WA is to watch how any member of the region’s three endemic species of black cockatoo “deals with” his or her food.
This involves hugely-varying amounts of “difficulty” or “effort”, depending on whatever is the currently-relevant “nut”, “spike”, “seed pod”, “cone”, or flower.
For Carnaby’s black cockatoos, Banksia are a staple food source.
Extracting Banksia seeds from a “cone” is equally a matter of precision and power.
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There is the small matter of nothing but blue skies being a recipe for the end of all life on “our” planet.
Supplying water is, however, not clouds’ only good quality.
If you wish to photograph birds, trees or flowers – most especially if you are using a digital camera, and there is no “screen” of vegetation immediately behind them – intense, unshaded sunlight is not your “dreams come true”.
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Caladenia latifolia – generally known as “pink fairy orchids”, or simply “pink fairies” – are not endemic to southwest Western Australia.
They also naturally occur in other southern Australian places, including Tasmania.
In my (totally “unscientific”) experience, as someone who has lived on both sides of the Nullarbor, they appear to be much more “common”/easily-seen in southwest WA than anywhere else I have been.
The pictured ones were among more than a few that were flowering in Hollywood Reserve on 01.09.2024.
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In January 2022 parts of Hollywood were devastated by a very fierce (i.e. hot) fire.
You didn’t hear about it?
My beloved and I have visited Hollywood many times, but the only bit of Los Angeles that we have directly “enjoyed” is its godawful airport.
We harbour no desire to set foot in the famous/infamous Hollywood, but are very fond of the petite, not-famous Hollywood Reserve.
This choice patch of inner-urban bushland sits “right next door” to one of Australia’s major cemeteries.
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The only Hollywood to have repeatedly appeared in Pelican Yoga is a small but significant piece of remnant bushland, adjacent to Perth’s Karrakatta Cemetery.
Until 19 January this year, the organism pictured above was a fine, living example of a weird, wonderful, and very rare Western Australian Acacia species.
When I photographed a few of its “leaves”, glowing in bright winter light at 2.33 pm on 01 July 2022, it and they were as dead as the many thousands of entombed persons, nearby.
Comments closedTiny toadstools and strange flora too!
Biodiversity-wise, Western Australia’s Hollywood is enormously wealthier than California’s.
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