Wire-Leaf Mistletoe Amyema preissii has dense bunches of bright orange-red flowers which produces copious amounts of nectar, but no perfume (that I could detect) - a great example of bird pollinating flowers. However, I was perplexed by flower peculiarities.

• Stamens and pistil project out to touch a bird’s head as it drinks nectar, but petals are open right down to the ovary. This allows short-tongued insects like ants, flies, and honeybees to steal nectar without pollinating the flower.
• Flowers were open or closed with very few in between.
• In early morning nectar leaked out of closed flowers and collected on the bulbous end, but there was no sign of nectar on anthers or pistil of open flowers.

Intrigued, I revisited a flowering mistletoe for several days and dissected flowers at varying stages. It was a great learning experience!

The closed downward hanging flower consists of five tepals which are fused into a long tube with a bulbous end. The anthers and stigma are packed so tightly at the end that they resist entry from nectar flowing down from the flower base.
When the flower is ready to open, nectar flows down the inside, escapes from joins between tepals on the side, and coats the end. There were lots of bees on open flowers but they avoided the nectar on unopened flowers. Didn't like sticky claws?
When I dissected closed flowers I could see that stamens and anthers form a straight line from the centre of the tepal, but the end of the tepal that encloses them is curved. This creates a spring mechanism, which is held in place by stronger join at the end of the tepal.
Perhaps, when honeyeaters lick nectar off the flower end, the motion causes the flower to spring open so the bird can pollinate it.

About 10% of the flowers remained closed apart from a tiny dark dot on the outside, which marked the point where a moth or other insect laid an egg. Inside was a 3mm translucent grub, which ate the flower's reproductive parts then formed a dark brown pupa.

Honey bees were at the flowers from dawn to dusk with the occasional Campanotis chalceus ant. They were able to steal nectar without contacting anthers and stigma, but pollination occurred when bees collected pollen from the anthers. After seeing a bee eating pollen I learnt that honey bees have 2 stomachs: One for eating pollen and nectar for energy,and the other for storing honey for the hive.

At late afternoons a pair of large Australian Hornets buzzed in regularly to feed, and just once a Silky Azure butterfly. This was a great find as they are very rare in this district. The caterpillar larvae eat  flower buds, flowers, leaves and soft stem parts of the mistletoe, but are particularly fond of the flower buds.

I decided to check out bush at Thomas Hogg Oval where Jam Wattles Acacia acuminata were infested with mistletoe (only occasional occurrence in Foxes Lair). This is typical of isolated small areas of bush. Apparently possums love eating mistletoe, particularly the flowers. As possums can't survive fox and cat predation in small areas with few trees, mistletoe gets out of control. There were lots of honeyeaters but fewer bees. Many mistletoes were old and dying back. Flowers on some were dying from extensive  infestation of giant scales, which were being attended by aggressive meat ants.
Sadly an unbalanced ecosystem. 

Further information Mistletoe blog

The book “Unravelling the Secret Lives of Plant Root Systems” has explained another interesting feature of our local bush: Large groups of the same small perennial plants amidst an otherwise diverse shrub understorey.
These plants usually reproduce vegetatively rather than from seed.
It all comes back to plant strategies for coping with fire.
Some plants only reproduce sexually by seed (obligate seeders) and some only asexually by vegetative growth (obligate resprouters) and many do both.
Root suckering plants send shoots up from shallow spreading roots, which are deep enough to be protected from fire.
They tend to be more common on fire-prone sandy surfaced soils, and in higher rainfall areas.
 As resprouters don’t rely on fire for seed germination, they can outcompete seeders in the absence of fire. A downside is that each resprouter plant is a clone, putting them at risk of extinction when conditions change. They overcome this by being very-long lived with plants commonly living for 50 to 100 years. Some resprouters live to 1000! During this time random mutations create genetic variation, which enables them to change.
Common Popflower Glischrocaryon aureum produces few fertile seeds, along with clonal members of the Goodeniaceae family (Goodenias, Dampieras). All those lovely flowers for the the pollinators produce few  seeds!

In the image below lines of White Goodenia/Goodenia scapigera clones  have sprouted from lateral roots in Foxes Lair.

Another example is Persoonia quinquinervis. Persoonias are the only members of the Proteacea family that rely on mycorrhizae instead of cluster roots to enhance water and nutrient uptake.

​Here is a strange one. There are three patches of quandongs (Santalum acuminatum) in Foxes Lair. they flower annually but I have never found a nut. When a fire swept through one side of a clump that was bisected by a road there was no difference in density between burnt and unburnt sides. This indicated to me that there was no seed germination in the unburnt side. They must all be clones.

Greetings fellow Foxies,
Dodder Laurel (family Cassytha) is a good honest parasite that doesn’t hide its intentions.
Unlike hemiparasites like mistletoe, quandong, sandalwood, Leptomeria, and Christmas tree, it is a stem holoparasite that gets all its fixed carbon from its host. It germinates in the soil but has suckers on its stems that tap into the conducting vessels in stems of their host. Plants have numerous thin twining stems with almost no leaves that form a mat on their host. Like many plant parasites they are pale green, have minute flowers, and forms a fruit that birds and animals eat to distribute them.
Dodder laurels are quite common on Drummond’s mallee in Candy Block yellow sand, and I found one on a fallen sheoak in Foxes Lair. Different species I think.
A senior Parks and Wildlife Service officer questioned the sanity of anyone interested in dodder laurel, but he will eat his words when he reads this link on its health benefits.

Greetings fellow Foxies,
This issue is devoted to Foxes Lair triggerplants that mostly flower in October, and which have a fascinating method of pollination.
The male (anther) and female (pistil) parts occur side by side on a spring loaded strap called the trigger.
When an insect lands in the right place in the flower the trigger springs down on its back depositing pollen on its back and pollinating the pistil with pollen from another plant. Images below show the stages in our largest triggerplant Stylidium schoenoides or ‘Cowkick’ (mean plant!).
But being beaten up is not the only problem for insects. Apparently many triggerplants have sticky flower undersides that like sundews, trap insects to provide nutrients for the plants.
For more information see this site.
Triggerplant species in Foxes Lair are in this pdf

Stylidium amoenum Lilac Triggerplant) is worth seeing on the Banksia Walk near the water tank, as are the delicate spreading Stylidium pingrupensis plants on the Valley Walk that are one of the last flowers left after spring.
Look closely and you will see that they are micro stilt plants that have raised crowns to protect them from the hot ground. a real oddity is the attractive purplish pink Stylidium leptophyllum Needle-leaved triggerplants as there is only one plant in Foxes Lair on the right opposite the mallees as you enter from Williams Road. Watch for pink tape.

A hemiparasitic plant steals water and minerals from their hosts but still use green chlorophyll in their leaves to produce energy.
Holoparasites derive all their energy from their hosts without killing them. Plant examples include dodder laurel and orabanche, and there are many animal parasites such as ticks and fleas.
The animal world also has parasitoids, such as wasps whose larvae kill their hosts.​
Mistletoes are hemiparasites, which grow on eucalypt and acacia branches, but most hemiparasites feed from their host's roots.
The beautiful Christmas tree Nuytsia floribunda is the largest root hemiparasitise, and has special organs on their roots called haustoria to tap into the sap of host plants. In the 1960’s they caused short circuits in underground power cables until resistant cables were developed.
Sandalwood and quandongs are Santalum genus hemiparasites, which prefer acacias.

Western quandong Santalum acuminatum is a small tree that produces edible nuts covered by a red vitamin C-rich rind that makes wonderful jam. In Foxes Lair it occurs as clumps of small shrubs that have never fruited in the last twenty years. I think that the clumps are clones of a single plant, which have spread from underground root shoots.

​Australian Sandalwood Santalum spicatum has been planted at the Range Road car park with their jam acacia hosts. They have tasty nuts like macadamias.

Weeping, narrow-leaved bitter quandong, Santalum murryanum occurs on lateritic soils. It  has inedible fruit.
Olax and quandongs have bell-shaped root haustoria that attach to the host root and drill into it to connect to the water bearing vessels. ​

​Olax benthamiana is another hemiparasite flowering now on gravelly soils, which became more common after the 2009 fire. It is adapted to germinate with its acacia and melaleuca shrub hosts. Its flowers have a strong sweet smell which attracts insect pollinators

Most hemiparasites produce nuts or fruit (drupes) that are spread by passing through animals (e.g) emus woylies and birds, some of which are now extinct in most reserves. This has reduced the ability of quandong and sandalwood to spread. There has been a huge regeneration of bitter quandong seedlings after a 2009 fire. As there are far more plants that can be supported by their hosts; the stand has to thin out.

Native currants (Leptomeria species) tend to occur in relatively bare areas under eucalypts, which they must be parasitising.
They are very obvious in late spring and summer, with their almost glowing light green soft looking foliage. See them under the salmon gums near the Brockway tree at Yilliminning Rock. The tiny bush tucker 'currants' are very high in vitamin C.