About Me

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Canberra-based naturalist, conservationist, educator since 1980. I’m passionate about the natural world (especially the southern hemisphere), and trying to understand it and to share such understandings. To that aim I’ve written several books (most recently 'Birds in Their Habitats' and 'Australian Bird Names; origins and meanings'), and run tours all over Australia, and for 17 years to South and Central America. I've done a lot of ABC radio work, chaired a government environmental advisory committee and taught many adult education classes – and of course presented this blog, since 2012. I am a recipient of the Australian Natural History Medallion, the Australian Plants Award and most recently a Medal of the Order of Australia for ‘services to conservation and the environment’. I live happily in suburban Duffy with my partner Louise surrounded by a dense native garden and lots of birds.

Saturday, 22 December 2012

Australian Christmas Trees

A touch premature perhaps, but we're about to head off for a few days for a family Christmas at Nowra (3 hours away on the Shoalhaven River, near the New South Wales south coast). 

Apart from the traditional northern hemisphere image, Christmas Tree means different things to different people in Australia, depending on where you live. In New South Wales it refers to a rainforest tree whose hitherto inconspicuous sepals develop dramatically and turn red after the petals drop.
Ceratopetalum gummeriferum, family Cunoniaceae.
Victorian Christmas Bush on the other hand (which also grows well north into New South Wales!) is a member of the mint family, with copious snowy white flowers in wet mountain gullies at Christmas time.
Prostanthera lasianthos, family Lamiaceae.
To a South Australian or Tasmanian, Christmas Bush refers to an equally prolifically white-flowered spiky shrub whose summer flowers attract hordes of native insects.
Bursaria spinosa, family Pittosporaceae.
A West Australian though would immediately think of Western Australian Christmas Tree, a wonderfully showy root parasite (a member of the mistletoe family in fact) which glows in the western heat.
Nuytsia floribunda, family Loranthaceae.
Wherever you are, and whatever this time of year means to you, may it be happy and peaceful - and full of the wonders of nature!

Back on Friday 28 December.


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2 comments:

Susan said...

Bon fête -- ours is set to be distinctly soggy, with rain, but not very cold, for the foreseeable.

22 December 2012 at 21:42
Ian Fraser said...

Merci bien Susan - et bon fête a vous et les votres. In the event I'm not sure that ours was much warmer than yours, though it's warming up again nicely now.

28 December 2012 at 16:10

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