We have had over a week of rain!
And it still continues.
Good for the grass, vines and dams but limits the amount of outside work you can do as well as visits to the beach.
So in an effort to ward off a bout of cabin fever I will ramble on a bit, horticulturally.
The spring flower displays continue to impress. Our very old and large bottlebrush (Callistemon sp.) is having a bumper year. It is just covered in flowers.
This genus is doing well all over our area. It is a very popular garden plant. Most flower spikes are red but there are white, yellow and purple varieties as well. A rare one is green but have not seen one of those around here.
Back in 2007 I blogged about my new Wollemi Pine (Wollemia nobilis).
When a small stand of these trees was found in a remote part of the Blue Mountains near Sydney sixteen years ago, it was seen to have certain characteristics of the 200-million-year-old family Araucariaceae but was not similar to any living species in the family. Comparison with living and fossilised Araucariaceae proved that it was indeed a member of that family. Fossils resembling Wollemia and possibly related to it are widespread in Australia, New Zealand and Antarctica but Wollemia nobilis is the sole living member of its genus. The last known fossils of the genus date from approximately 2 million years ago.
The location of the trees is still a closely guarded secret but thousands of clones have been cultivated for public sale.
Ours is still growing well in a pot, albeit a bigger one, and now quite tall. It is a fascinating plant to watch, especially in spring.
The trunk growing point as well as those of the branches are covered initially in wax (probably evolved for cold climate protection) which is then discarded as new branches/leaves start to form.
There is an interesting discussion about this tree on the Royal Botanical Gardens web site.
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