Greetings fellow Foxies,
                                      Purple flowered hoveas that are starting to flower on gravelly soils are the earliest of the pea flowers. There are 3 species in Foxes Lair that have differing leaves and tend to be in different areas, and rarely have white flowers. Purple seems to be a poor colour to attract insects, but unlike humans, insects can see ultraviolet light, so what looks purple to us appears gleaming white to an insect. 

Greetings fellow Foxies,
                                      Tent web spiders belong to the orb weaver family Araneidae, but do not produce typical vertical circular orb webs. They have non sticky horizontal webs, with a cone shaped arrangement of silken threads above that contains a central silky mass that is used as a retreat, nursery and rubbish dump.
 
The spider approaches its prey from the underside of the web. Webs are common in sedges and low  shrubs on open country, and form a part of the  ‘fairy houses’ web display on dewy mornings.
 
These spiders also share their webs with tiny kleptoparasite spiders.

Greetings fellow Foxies,
                                 
Witches broom or little leaf disease is a hormone-induced growth distortion of woody plants that only affects part of the plant.
 
In a prior Foxypress I discussed galls that differ from the strange and miniature witches broom shoots and leaves that are induced by insect spread viruses and phytoplasma (primitive bacteria), or fungal infection.
The image on the left shows a wandoo affected by witch's broom near the Marri picnic area.

3 Below are images of witches broom  caused by A rust fungus Ceratacoma jacksoniae that affects a range of pea flowers, also causes a type of witches broom. Images below show an infection on stinkwood (Jacksonia epiphyllum). The strange red growths contain tiny reddish fruiting rods that are quite different from the powdery pustules that occur on our crops.