Spring Kilmore

Something Is Moving In the Land

After a few wet and cold weeks, we are seeing glimpses of Spring. We have patches of bright  and warm sunshine interspersed amongst the cold squalls. I was standing in bright sunshine just a few hours ago whilst hail stones were hitting my bald head.







Just this week, all of a sudden,  the flowers are beginning to bloom. There are many Early-Nancy, far more than we usually have. They are called Early-Nancy for an obvious reason, one of the first flowers of Spring. Good rainfall this year seems to have helped them along. The botanical name of these small pinky white flowersw is Wurmbea dioica. 


 I love botanical names, they contain so much information. According to Michael Bedingfield,

 (http://step.asn.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Wurmbea-dioica-Early-Nancy.pdf  writing in the Friends of the Grassland Newsletter 2003)  F. Van Wurmb was a Dutch merchant and amateur
botanist who lived in Java, Indonesia in the 18th century. And the word dioica is a Greek word for two houses. This is referring to the male and female flowers which occur on the plants. They usually occur on different plants but I am sure I have seen them on a single plant.

It is quite easy to see the difference between the flowers, the female flowers have oval shaped fruit. Sometimes there are a few bisexual flowers in the inflorescence. The different flowers can be seen in the pictures.



I saw my first Green-hood orchid out, and there are many more on the way.



 I found a small hovea, just the one at this stage, and patches of clematis.



I think it was Edna Walling who, when speaking of gardening, talked of the enormous pleasure in anticipating. what is to come. There is so much to look forward to in the coming weeks.

What a waste of time to walk around a golf course when we can walk in the bush.








 

Gorse Mite

Mite (Gorse) Tetranychus lintearius

I was out walking along the Dry Creek at Kilmore East today. It generally is a dry creek but after the recent rains, there is now a string of waterholes which follow the creek line.

The area is a mixture of farming land with a large area given over to blue gums. Between the train line and the blue gums runs the creek. It is a narrow corridor of black and other wattles, furze bushes, chinese scrub  and small eucalypts.

The wattle are blooming at present as are the furze bushes.

The furze, or gorse bushes are covered in masses of what looks like dense spider webs. However there are no spiders. It looks quite beautiful, like Christmas snow on conifers. When I look closer I can see a red stain through parts of this. More closely I can see what looks like red saw dust, very fine.

It's time to look at my references. I'll let the Friends Of Te Henui, New Zealand tell you all about it. You can read the whole story at their wonderfully detailed site.  http://www.terrain.net.nz/friends-of-te-henui-group/spiders/gorse-spider-mite.html

Photo by Friends of Te Henui  

Mite (Gorse) Tetranychus lintearius

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Subphylum: Chelicerata
Class: Arachnida
Subclass: Acari
Superorder: Acariformes
Order: Prostigmata
Family: Tetranychidae
Genus: Tetranychus
Species: T. lintearius
Binomial name: Tetranychus lintearius
Common Name : Gorse spider mite

Tetranychus lintearius is a species of spider mite known as the gorse spider mite. It was imported from England 1988 as an agent of biological pest control on common gorse, a noxious weed. The adult mite is half a millimetre long and bright red. It lives in colonies in a shelter of spun silk spanning many branch tips. Infested plants are easily identifiable by these cobweb-like sheets of silk, which can grow quite large. The female lays one to four eggs per day during her three- to four-week adult lifespan. The tiny nymph is small enough to disperse on the wind during its first stage. Those that stay behind populate the colony as it expands. This mite is native to Europe, where it does more damage to the plant than any other organism. The mite appears to be host-specific; it does not attack any other plants. The adult and nymph damage the plant by piercing its tissues during feeding. Heavy mite activity reduces flowering and can stunt the development of the branches but does not kill the plant. 

Photo by Friends of Te Henui

Eastern Spine-bill & Red Wattlebird

SOME LIFE AFTER WINTERY DAYS

It has been very damp and dark for the last few weeks in Kilmore. It has been hard to get out and see what is happening. The few times I have been out, everything seems to be dampened by the cool and misty air. When it has stopped drizzling, the moisture just continues to drip, drip, drip from the air, like a kitchen squeegee dripping into a sink.

Today there was some beautiful winter sunshine as the day went on and the temperatures rose a little. There were some pretty visitors to the grevillea bushes in my garden.


The Eastern Spine-bill (Acanthorhynchus tenuirostris) was there first.

Strange name. Acanthus is a green plant with a spiny shaped leaves. Maybe that is a connection. Ryhnchus, as in ornithorhyncus, the duck-billed platypus,or perhaps more literally, bird billed platypus (ornith). Thus spine-bill. And the Specific name Tenuirostris, Wikipedia tells me is made up of the Latin word for narrow, tenuis  and rostris meaning a beak like projection. There you have it, Spine-bill, Spine-bill. Such a good name, they used it twice.

Anyway the Spine-bill was there, happily among the grevillea flowers, paying very little attention to me. As soon as the wattle bird arrived, the other was gone like a flash. These red-wattled birds are very aggressive and very noisy. There are so many of them around this part of Victoria, many other birds struggle to be free of their unwanted attention. (Anthochaera carunculata). The  genus name means flower lover and the species name carunculata is from the Latin word for a small piece of meat, which I assume relates to the small red wattles. 

The wattle bird sat on a tree sedately on a tree branch for a few moments and then, called by his relatives, flew off. The Spine-bill immediately emerged from wherever he or she had been hiding and,  afraid no longer, continued feeding.