​Greetings fellow Foxies,
 
I discovered these tiny ornamental plants last August in a wet mossy patch surrounding a rock pool on a granite outcrop at Highbury B Block. It is a bladderwort, a carnivorous plant. There are 15 bladderwort species in WA, mainly in wetter areas.
The plants are only about 3 cm high but brilliantly coloured.
I thought that the curved flower receptacle was the bladder, but no, it has another function.
Apparently, it is designed for pollination by the Western Spinebill.
Red attracts birds, its height is right for ground-hunting spinebills, and the curve matches the spinebill’s beak. As the spinebill inserts its beak the beak pushes on to a hinged ovary and pistil and collects a dob of pollen to take to the next plant as it withdraws.

The unique insect-catching bladders are tiny little vesicles underneath the leaves. I couldn’t see them when I searched recently. Luckily they are well described in this wonderful free PDF book: Plant Life of Southwestern Australia Adaptations for Survival

​Here is an extract
 
 Each trap is partially water- filled, and has a door surrounded by sensitive hairs that direct prey to the opening. The trapdoor opens inwards upon irritation by a passing animal such as a mosquito larva. After the prey brushes against the trigger hairs, it is sucked in because of the release of negative pressure maintained inside the utricle, engorging several times its resting volume. Traps are connected to the plant via stolons, stalks or leaves. Plants may even be rootless.
After firing, the trap restores the negative pressure by removing water from the lumen until the original compressed shape is returned. After this process is completed, which lasts about 30 minutes, the trap is ready to fire again.

I took a muntered flower that had been cut off by a grub home for dissection.
 
The flower has three parts:

• A curved nectar chamber with hinged anthers at the top.
• A rear tepal  that covers the top of nectar chamber, which has a hole in the centre and an upraised tip.
• A front tepal that looks like an insect landing pad with yellow bulges that resemble anthers.

 
The top view of the dissected flower shows an entry hole for a spinebill beak with a collar that would exclude all but the smallest insect. Side views show the (very dead) ovary on top of a hinged anther.  The normally yellow anthers are on the underside.
​In summer the plant dies back to a tiny over summering corm.

Reference Floral micromorphology of the bird-pollinated carnivorous plant species Utricularia menziesii R.Br. (Lentibulariaceae)

Greetings fellow
If you cast your eyes upwards in Foxes Lair in February, you will see lovely red Mistletoe flowers.
Ah Mistletoe, the flower of love, dedicated to the goddess Athena, and placed above doors at Christmas and where people who meet there must kiss. If you have a hankering for osculation, arrange to meet the intended person below a Mistletoe infected jam tree that adjoins the top of the loop that contains the Granite Walk picnic tables.
Now that you are fired up I mention that Mistletoe is a stem hemiparasite that can kill its host, and the name literally means ‘dung-on-a-twig’. This because Mistletoe produces a berry that is eaten by the Mistletoe bird, which in turn straddles branches to deposit  its dropping containing the seed on the branch. When the seed germinates, the seedling produces a connection like a vegetative placenta that enables it to tap into the host’s sap.
Dodder laurel is also a stem parasite, but is a holoparasite.

Mistletoe berries are a bush tucker that are sweet but so sticky that they the flesh can't be separated from the seed; this helps the seeds to stick on branches after passing through whatever eats them.
This fabulous blog shows that mistletoes are an integral part of the bush. Their fruit is food for several birds and animals, and they do not necessarily kill their host.