Greetings fellow Foxies,

One of my favourite Foxes Lair spots in early October is the Banksia Walk area around the town water tank. To get there drive up the track to the water tank from Williams Road. Around a walk trail connecting to the Banksia Walk are two lovely wildflowers. Weeping Dampiera sacculata is my favourite Dampiera. At this spot you can find a range of colour shades from intense blue to white.



 
There are also clumps of lovely velvet blue flowering Marianthus drummondianus plants. Today I was quite excited to find a pink-flowered version

​Look out for the beautiful Lilac Trigger Plant Stylidium amoenum on the Banksia Walk beside the green bench amongst the jarrah trees.

Greetings fellow Foxies,
Delightful Verticordias or Featherflowers, flower in our local reserves from October to early November when peak flowering has passed. Local verticordias prefer sands and sandy gravels, commonly in kwongan sandplain.
The genus Verticordia (Myrtaceae family) comes from Latin meaning “turner of hearts”, which refers to Venus the Roman goddess of love, whose favourite plant was a myrtle. Early plant taxonomists were a romantic lot. 

​Verticordias have delightful feathery petals and sepals that come in all colours except blue.
Some can be a bit confusing for non-specialists like me to identify as flowers in species like Verticordia hueglii below and Verticordia grandiflora change colour as they mature. 

Good spots to see verticordias are

• Kwongan scrub about 500 metres past the turnoff to Yilliminning Rock on Birdwhistle Road. Wonderful display of pinkish white Verticordia eriocephala in a low slope on the west of the road.
• Harrismith Nature reserve. Several species in kwongan upland.
• The Kwongan Walk at Candy Block in October ( also other interesting kwongan wildflowers)
• Newman Block. Look for Verticordia acerosa and Verticordia grandiflora on the upland gravel part of the Orchid Walk. There is a lovely show of pink Verticordia densiflora on the white sand part of the Sandplain Walk in early November if there has been good spring rain.
• Stops 2 and 3 at Highbury Nature Reserve.

​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 Foxies,
 
My journey into underground plant parts continues.
Rhizomes are basically underground stems, which are particularly common in monocotyledons. Domestic examples are your lawn, ginger and turmeric.
Basically, stem like roots radiate out from the seedling plant that have nodes at regular intervals. Each node sprouts roots and a vegetative shoot called a culm that forms a flower.
Rhizomes are common in the bush, particularly on sedges, rushes and native grasses. These plants can live for decades. The central parent plant often dies as clones radiate outwards to form a circle. Spinifex is a great example.
In the image of a yellow kangaroo paw from my garden, fleshy rhizomes store starch to maintain the plant over summer when the culms often die off, and to help produce new culms as flowers on the old ones mature and die.

​As a very general rule of thumb there are two main types of rhizomatous plants.
• Ones with horizontal rhizomes that spread underground, which enables them to survive severe fires. Members of this group have the fleshy rhizomes and often occur in large patches.
• Ones with more vertical rhizomes that form very clumpy plants that are less fire tolerant. These tend to be more common in less fire-prone areas like wetlands and may have other features that protect them from fire.

​Have you noticed how difficult it can be to shake the sand off grass weeds after you pull them out? Many monocotyledons have sand binding roots. These secrete a gum from their roots to form a sandy ‘armour’ that helps to protect them from heat, drying and perhaps root chewing insects. Australian native plants produce very tough long-lasting sand binding root covers that persist long after the plant has died and provide important protection against erosion.

Kangaroo paws (Genus Anigozanthus) have rhizomes and sand binding roots.Two local plants in the Anigozanthus genus are Cat Paw Anigozanthus humilis (common on sandy soils) and the Little Kangaroo Paw Anigozanthus bicolor (found at Highbury B Block)