Kangaroo Island Wildflowers – October 2011

Believing that mid spring would be a very good time to revisit Kangaroo Island to see the local display of Wildflowers, we went with an open mind on what would be available and how many different species we would find for or stay. During our 2-week stay over on the Island in Mid October, we were rewarded with an incredible display of Wildflowers that stretched from one end of the Island to the other and all but the last day we were rewarded with new finds along the way.



Our greatest number of new Wildflowers found in any one-day drive, was on day 3 when we were leaving the Dudley Peninsula and travelling the back roads through to American River, where we found and photographed 46 new species for our trip. On average we would find up to 10 new species each day, some days more and some less.



Most of the photos were taken with a 60mm Macro Lens, while there were a good number of times when hiking that I was restricted to the standard 18 – 200mm telephoto lens on the camera. My biggest enemy was the breeze, as using a Macro lens gave me a very shallow depth of field and the slightest breeze on the flowers would put them out of focus. For this very reason, I would take around 10 images of each flower in the hope that I would have at least one image that would be in focus. The size of the flowers varied greatly from around 2mm in size for the smallest, up to around 10cm in size for the largest, being Callistemon rugulos var. rugulosus or its common name, the Scarlet Bottlebrush.







The introduced or weed species I will show at the end, with one very special non Native flower that needs a special note – Morus nigra or its common name, the Mulberry. This is no ordinary tree as it has withstood the pressures of nature for over 175 years when it was first planted at Reeves Point as a food source for the first settlers who settled on Kangaroo Island before Adelaide was first settled in 1836.







Another special feature of this Blog and photos is that it will set a new record for ExplorOz with the number of new images in a blog, with over 180 images posted. Now that the Blog is complete and there have been no issues, it now shows others that it is possible to add a large number of viewable size images that are easy to view.



As with all Blog images, please click on the first image, or any image that you wish to view to enlarge it to its maximum size for viewing, and then use the Next tab to view the next image in its full size.





Stephen Langman



November 2011



































































































Introduced Species





Kangaroo Island is no different to other Australian locations, where over the years introduced species of non Australian Native plants have made their way onto the Island.