• ​Most acacia flowers have no nectar, but rely on a scent and dazzling yellow colour to attract pollinators. I think that most pollination is done by pollen-collecting bees. Birds, flies (particularly hover flies), and pollen-eating wasps may also be involved. The taxonomy literature is so confusing, I couldn't work out which subgenus a species belongs to, or their pollinators.
• Most acacias secrete nectar from special glands on stems and phyllodes (flattened leaf-like stems) to attract ants, which keep parasites away.
• Despite producing thousands of flowers, relatively few produce their pea-like pods. I suspect this may be because the seed is very long lasting and requires fire to germinate. Some seeds have a fleshy part (aril) to attract ants, which take the seed down their burrows away from predators.
• Noongars collected acacia seeds as bush tucker. A wacky friend of mine was going to make a fortune selling acacia flour noodles - until weevils crawled out of the seeds:) .

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Further reading
A Simple Botany of Wattles
Pollination Ecology of Acacias

Greetings fellow foxies,
About 33 years ago I planted a Eucalyptus caesia subspecies caesia (gungurru) mallee in my front yard, which has grown into a magnificent specimen that produces cascades of beautiful pink flowers. It is great bird attractant, particularly New Holland honeyeaters and western wattle birds, which claim ownership at various times of the year. Lately most flowers (and my wife's roses and geraniums) are lopped by ### twenty eight parrots. Very occasionally red-tailed black and Carnabys cockatoos chew the nuts, but not red capped parrots. Plenty of honeybees.
Eucalyptus caesia is a rare bird-pollinated species that is endemic to 25 granite outcrops in the Central Wheatbelt of Western Australia, but is widely grown in native gardens. Every surviving flower on my caesia develops into a nut even though the nearest other caesia is over 200 metres down the road, and I see the same with single eucalypt species in Foxes Lair. Evidently most eucalypts can self pollinate!

This study of E. caesia pollination at Boyagin Rock revealed some amazing information.

• The large flowers are mainly pollinated by birds, which regularly  transmit pollen up to 120 metres.
• On average there were three genetic groups at each mallee patch, which minimised damaging inbreeding. Insect-pollinated plants would have less diversity
• Clumps often had a group of clone plants which developed into individual plants as the lignotuber (mallee root) expanded then rotted between suckers. The largest  clonal patch comprised 55 stems over an area 8.8 m wide and 11.5 m long. This patch may be thousands of years old and among the oldest known eucalypts. I was impressed by the 80cm diameter root on my 33 year old plant before reading the paper.
• At natural Caesia locations, there hasn't been a surviving seedling for over 50 years. Fire is required to remove competition.
• The paper provides an opportunity to revise your knowledge of statistics and  words like cleistogamy and kurtosis.

I collected flowers at varying stages of development for examination. Pollen develops early in the flower's development, and is actively collected by honeybees as soon as the bud cap is shed, and inward-facing stamens still formed a tube down to the flower base. Soon afterwards bees crawled down into the base where nectar was being produced. Honeyeaters also started feeding as the stamens folded out and fully opened.

​ Bees vigourously wiggled their way across stamens, stuffing pollen into their leg-sacs.The anthers seemed to be sticky and didn't spontaneously shed pollen like most other flowers.

I noticed bees still licking nectar from the flower base in mature flowers while anthers were declining. This indicated that the later maturing stigma on the end of the style was still receptive to pollen. It is a logical way to prevent the flower pollinating itself.
Signs of stigma maturity were subtle, but images show it changes from being hidden in the bud cap,then a fold at the tip (non-receptive), to a moist receptive bulge.

​Honeybees are larger than most native bees, but it was evident that they rarely contacted the stigma due to large flower size. They just stole pollen and nectar while birds, small animals, (large flower wasps?) did the pollination.
Apart from stink bugs, which routinely remove growing points from most seedlings I try to rear in Foxes Lair, few insects bother my street tree. This little fellow is tolerated.

Dodonaea species are widespread in Western Australia. The common name hop bush comes from winged fruits which resemble hops.
​A ‘dodonaea’ google search yields pages of links/advertisements for sticky hopbush Dodonaea viscosa, which is one of the most widely dispersed plants in tropical/temperate parts of the world. It is a renowned hedge species and is full of bioactive substances developed by the species to repel insects. The plant, which  originates from rangeland WA and further east was used by aboriginal people for pain relief and for shelters, because they retained their leaves.
Beer-deprived European settlers used it as a hop substitute to brew a bitter but acceptable beer. I wonder whether narcotic components gave the beer an extra kick? 
I found an introduced plant of Dodonaea viscosa subspecies angustissima at Birdwhistle Rock.

Dodonaeas are dioecious (male and female), wind-pollinated plants with simple leaves. Flowers are small and insignificant. The female has a single pistil clasped by sepals. Male flowers look more like normal flowers because they have large, almost stalkless twisted anthers on top of a base of outstretched sepals. Anthers split open to allow pollen to blow away to female plants.

As an aside, I heard much buzzing in a male rock sheoak tree recently. As sheoaks are also wind pollinated I initially thought that there was a nest inside. No! male flowers were being raided by honeybees frantically collecting pollen. I wonder whether chemical-rich dodonaea pollen repels them?

There are three species native to the Narrogin area.
From their location, I suspect that they  tolerate dry conditions and are long-lived
Dodonaea humifusa is an attractive ground hugging plant which occurs mostly on rocky red clay soil on the Granite trail. I haven't noticed fruit on these plants.

Dodonaea pinifolia is a small shrub with narrow leaves, which grows on rocky red loamy soil on the Claypit circuit.

I found broad-leaved Dodonaea bursarifolia as small shrubs, which were the only understorey plants under York gums at the Wickepin railway dam.

Pollinators attracted to nectar produced in a nectary at the base of the style transfer pollination to and from the stigma as they bend down to drink nectar. Flowers with long styles suit large pollinators like birds, while shorter ones are more suited to insects. Many grevilleas and hakeas have flowers in heads or groups.
​I spent an  hour watching insects watching a flowering Hakea lissocarpha, which has profuse groups of flowers with short straight styles and a strong almost cloying aroma. The flowers were alive with insects, which barged their way through the flowers in search of nectar. I saw 2 butterfly, three fly, two wasp, and two bee species, and a honeyeater.

Here are a few weird and wonderful species