On a walk called the Tree Fern Forest Walk you’d expect to see plenty of tree ferns, which I did. The height of some surprised me.
But I wasn’t expecting there to also be a grasstree forest (Xanthorrhoea australis). Very slow growing, they can live for hundred of years.
Many times I came across burnt grasstree stumps that had been partly demolished; I assume to get at the central core, but for what and by what?
There were plenty of rainforest walks, where as usual my eye was drawn to details, like this ancient and tightly twisted vine.
Of course I was attracted to the many sorts of fungi in these forests, from the surprising high one whose top seemed to be emitting a soft pink light onto its host tree trunk, to the masses of long grey lobes or the orange-tipped colonies amidst splattered white on fallen trees or their cut ends.
I was keeping an eye on the banks of what was a deeply cut track, as I have often seen shy ground orchids like Greenhoods on banks. Not on this one, but it was absolutely festooned with mosses.
In several places I saw isolated colonies of this plant, that I have a dim memory of seeing before and being told it is a moss.
All told, Gibraltar National Park was a fabulous place to visit in September, and I am vastly enriched by what I saw there.
We are truly blessed with what Nature we still have in this country, so I will take this experience into my new practice, of ‘singing against the storm’.
You’re welcome to walk in my shoes on these walks, Ariel!
thanks terrifically for your wild walks..I sorta can’t get about for that nowadays being a smooth surfaced slitherer..Ariel x im already on yr mailing list
Thanks for your comments Meg and Ali. Always great to hear new things about these plants; your additions enrich my understanding of them.
Exquisite images Sharyn, thank you. The moss in the last one has always fascinated me….as have all mosses & lichens….but I have not often seen this particular one in my 40 years of life in Northern Rivers NSW. However, I remember a dense roughly circular patch of it, about a meter in diameter, nestled in the leaf-litter beneath the Silver Birch, Oak & Holly trees of the Sussex woodland of my childhood.
How lovely thank you for sharing -if I recall correctly there are parts of the grass tree that are very fragrant when burnt -a sweet almost musk like aroma.