SCENTED MAT RUSH

(Lomandra effusa)

(Photos: E. Cousins, flowering plant; C. Schultz, leaves, leaf tips, Cape Jervis)

Lomandras, or mat rushes, are tufted, normally shin-high perennials with long, narrow, bluey-green leaves that are quite tough. There are several varieties growing at Cape Jervis, but this particular one, the scented mat rush, is probably the easiest to identify. How? Check out the tops of those blade-like leaves… they generally have rabbit ears! That is, instead of a single point at the end of the leaf, there are two sharp tips. It looks like the leaf has been eaten or otherwise damaged! From winter to spring, there are pretty clusters of creamy-white, scented flowers hidden in amongst the foliage. If you look carefully you might see that some plants have different flowers; although the separate male and female plants are hard to tell apart until they have seed. So start looking for these pretty soon in some grasslands near you!!

SYNNOTIA

(Sparaxis villosa)

(Photos: E. Cousins; flower, patch of plants)

When you first see these flowers emerging in spring, you might think they are freesias. The flower has a similar ‘bent tubular’ look to it, and the leaves are flat, shin high and much the same green. However, they are really quite different. Freesia flowers form a group like a pan pipe, with about 5 per stem. Here, though, there is a single flower per stem. The flower itself is almost white in colour, with touches of yellow and purple…another difference. Also, the leaves are less pointy at the top, with a prominent centre vein.

LIMESTONE SPIDER ORCHID

(Jonesiopsis bicalliata)

(Photos: E. Cousins, a patch at Cape Jervis, closer view of the flower)

We were lucky enough to see an extensive colony of these little beauties flowering at Cape Jervis in late August. A spider orchid … but which one? We first thought the veined spider orchid (Caladenia reticulate) but the fringe is white not burgundy. Other contenders were ruled out by size or locations. Not being orchid experts, we searched several books, looked at countless images online and finally got the definitive answer from Rosalie Lawrence, courtesy of SA Natureteers. Rosalie tells us this orchid is widespread in SA, but not the Adelaide Hills. Guess they don’t have the limestone base Cape Jervis has! Among the features distinguishing this from the Arachnorchis (Spiders) family is that there are not two yellow glands at the base of the column, just a yellow glow. Many thanks, Rosalie!!

FREESIA

(Freesia cultivar)

(Photos: C. Schultz, a single flower, and a small clump with lots of buds at Cape Jervis)

This scented South African garden plant is now naturalised in many areas of bushland in South Australia. You won’t see it just yet though. Dormant over summer, the underground corms (bulbs) are waiting for winter-spring, when the soft, pale green leaves appear. These individually are flat, but together form a fan shape. The flowering stem can grow to about 40 cm, with kinks just before each of the flowers. The kinks give the flower head a look like a pan flute! The 6 ‘petals’ of the flowers are 3-5mm long, fused together at the base. In the bushland runaways, these petals are normally a creamy white, with possible hints of purple. Modern hybrid cultivars often come in many other colours but are not as scented though.

COMMON STORKS BILL

(Erodium cicutarium)

(Photos: E. Cousins, plant, close-up of flower; Cape Jervis. http://www.cabi.org/isc/datasheet/21843 ripe fruit )

Shin high, with deeply divided leaves, this weed loves disturbed or arid sites. There it will outcompete native plants. The annual weed has a rosette of deep green leaves at the base, which might produce a bit of stem as it grows older.  From the basal leaf rosette, slender stalks grow, supporting a small cluster of flowers. The flowers are 5-petalled and pink, each petal roughly elliptic in shape, 4-6mm long.

It is the long seed pods though that give the plant its common name. These grow as a ‘beak’ 3-4 cm long. As they ripen and dry, they twist to produce the corkscrew seen in the photo on the right. At this stage the feathery seeds are released into the air. Another Erodium, with the common name of Long Storks Bill, produces a beak up to 10cm long!

AUSTRALIAN BROOMRAPE

(Orobanche cernua var. australiana)

(Photos: E. Cousins, a single stem, close-up of a flower head; Cape Jervis)

When we saw these at Cape Jervis in early December, the plants were just starting to set seed, in what looked like little parcels of fine brown grit. Looking at the stem in the first photo, you can imagine what the plant looks like before the flowers appear: an asparagus stalk! Unlike asparagus though, these stems are covered in tubular purple flowers, each with leaves at their base (those brown flaps). Notice there is no green at all in the plant (stem, flowers OR leaves)! This isn’t because it is an old plant or anything, but because the plant is parasitic, relying on nearby plants for food. Although rare in SA, the patches we found were healthy and fairly extensive. Maybe this is because the adjacent Senecio host plants were also abundant and flourishing this year, after all those early rains!!

WEDGE-LEAVED POMADERRIS

(Pomaderris obcordata)

(Photos : E. Cousins, foliage, C. Schultz, flower head; at Cape Jervis)

This bushy shrub lives up to its name…or its name lives up to it! The leaves have a definite indentation at their tips, giving them a heart or wedge shape. The leaves are smooth, as you can see in the photo. What you can’t see is that they are hairy underneath. The star shaped flowers occur in dense little clusters, and are obviously very attractive to ants (see second photo above)!!! While the flower heads are whitish, the seed heads are blackish. These shrubs like the sand and limestone of the coast, but are still rare around the Fleurieu.  In fact, this is the only plant we know of and unfortunately no seed formed this year.

 WHITE FUMITORY

(Fumaria capreolata)(Photos: E. Cousins, plant; close-up of flower head)

This scrambling weed is found in damp soils along creek banks, etc. Its soft, hairless foliage is heavily lobed (a bit like flat parsley leaves in shape, and maidenhair fern in softness). The droopy flowers are tubular, clustered on a large bract. Each flower is white, tipped with a distinctive purple-red blotch. About 3 weeks after the first flowers appear, seeds are already maturing. These can stay viable for years: 3-5 years if they remain in the top 5 cm of soil, but up to 20 years if they have been carried 15cm down e.g. by ants or soil disturbance.

ONE-SIDED CREAMY CANDLES

(Stackhousia aspericocca ssp. one-sided inflorescence)

(Photos : E. Cousins, a patch at Cape Jervis; C. Schultz, close-up of flower & bracts)

We were lucky enough to see these flowering beautifully in a remnant vegetation patch at Cape Jervis in late September. The bright green patches attracted our attention from quite a distance away, even though the leaves are only about 30cm long. The flower spikes do stand quite a bit higher, with yellow flowers on just one side, as the name suggests. These flowers are tubular with 5 little lobes at the top, and a conspicuous green bract plus two smaller ones at the flower base. We have often seen a different version of creamy candles, one with creamy-white flowers all around the stem, but this was the first time we had seen these ones. Very pretty!

GUILFORD GRASS

(Romulea rosea)

(Photos: E. Cousins, a 10cm plant, close-up of 15mm flower; Cape Jervis)

These little weeds grow from small perennial corms. In late autumn they produce smooth, cylindrical, wiry, bright green leaves which are followed til November by the flowers. Each star-shaped flower has its own stem from the base, like the leaves.  The short-lived flowers are 6-petalled, pale pink-purple with a short yellow tube at the centre. Plants die off in summer heat, when roots pull the corms further underground to survive the surface heat til the following year. Pigs will eat the corms, but otherwise the plant has no fodder value. It can take over a lawn in just a few seasons. This is not really a grass as the common name would suggest; that name is from the fact that heavy infestations occurred around Guilford, WA. The botanical name is from Romulus, one of the founders of Rome…a bit international, given the plant is originally from South Africa!