This week I’m on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, visiting family before the Australasian Systematic Botany Society’s conference in Sydney next week. We arrived last night and this morning took a short walk to get a feel for our surroundings, from Diddillibah to the Maroochy River and back.
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| Maroochy River |
We haven’t seen much natural vegetation yet, but plenty of wildflowers and a few native Eucalypts and she-oaks.
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| Mangroves, Maroochy River. |
Along the river are mangroves, which I assume are the same as we have in New Zealand, Avicennia marina. It reaches its southern limit—and the southern limit of mangroves generally—at Corner Inlet, Victoria. Here, in the warmer climate, they grow taller.
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| Mistletoe in a Casuarina tree. |
There were mistletoes in the she-oak (Casuarina) trees near the river.
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| Mistletoe flower buds. |
I think this little weed is Emilia sonchifolia, something I’ve collected before, in Singapore; at least I think it’s the same.
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| Emilia sonchifolia |
Its resemblance to sow-thistle (Sonchus) is remarkable, but it’s convergence, because this isn’t in the same tribe.
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| Emilia sonchifolia flower head. |
The single row of involucral bracts is characteristic of tribe Senecioneae, whereas Sonchus is in the Lactuceae.
And there was a pelican on the river. Nice.
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