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A while ago, actually more than a decade ago already!, my husband and I went on a month-long birding tout of eastern and northern Australia led by members of the Audubon Society of Corvallis, Oregon. While the group was scanning various parts of the scenery for avifauna, I was fascinated by the exotic plants endemic to Australia. Like kangaroos, koalas, echidnas and other unique fauna, Australian flora evolved in isolation after techtonic forces broke it off from supercontinent Gondwana about 135 million years ago, and Australia began its majestic drift to its present location bounded by the Indian, Pacific, and Southern Oceans. October was Southern Hemisphere’s spring, so many plants were in bloom.
One of the iconic flowering shrubs of New South Wales is the wild waratah, Telopea speciosissima, an Australian endemic.
One surprise was stumbling upon the world’s tallest lily, the Gymea lily, Doryanthes excelsa, in bloom along a road in the coastal Royal National Park of New South Wales. Who knew?
Another surprise to me were lush rainforests. In New South Wales there were temperate rainforests with lots of ferns, strangler figs, vines and palms. In Queensland there were tropical rainforests with lots of ferns, strangler figs, vines and palms, plus a venomous tree.
Of course there were eucalyptus forests — lots and lots of eucalyptus, aka gum, trees, many in flower with honeyeater birds feasting on the nectar.
There were both white and black barked eucalyptus trees.
After touring around New South Wales, we flew to the hot, very hot!, and dry Northern Territory, with a much different landscape which included strange boab trees, in the same genus as African baobab trees, which look like them with huge inflated trunks that store water taken up during occasional rains. The flowers are pollinated by bats. Recent DNA analysis has shown that baobab trees evolved in Madagascar about 21 million years ago, and their seeds were probably carried by ocean currents west to the African mainland and east to Australia www.bbc.com/....
There were also some weird looking Pandamus trees on a track in the Kakadu National Park.
And lots of termite mounds — some really huge.
Then it was on to the tropical rainforests of Queensland.
The Queensland rainforest features a truly enormous, 500 year old strangler fig, the Curtain Fig Tree, a major tourist attraction: en.wikipedia.org/...
Australia is well known for its venomous creatures — spiders, snakes, and box jellyfish. But of course Australia also has a venomous plant. The stinging tree, or Gympie Gympie, Dendrocnide moroides. This nasty plant, related to nettles, has leaves covered with toxin-laden spines that cause excruciating pain if touched.
We did see kangaroos — here is a mob of grey kangaroos in Girraween National Park in the higher and drier Queensland tablelands, eucalyptus forest in the background..
A final stop was a tourist mecca: O’Reilly’s Guest House at Lamington National Park in southern Queensland, which featured both tropical rainforest and dryer landscapes.
And finally, after an exciting and exhausting month, sunset on our last day before flying home.
What is going on in your floral world? Photos appreciated!
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