Shooting natives

I hiked for a few hours today and enjoyed it as usual. It's been cool lately, autumn has taken hold and leaves are falling all over the place. Australia has very few native deciduous tree species though and most are in the sub-tropical and tropical regions in the north of the country; plants like the red and white cedars and the boab. This means there's generally always something green to look at and I'm glad of it.

The track was lined with lush green native trees and bushes in bloom and it all looked rather nice. I decided to grab a few sprigs here and there and see if I could get a decent photo or two and this post is the result. Pictured are a Red Flowering Gum (Corymbia ficifolia) and an Acacia (Acacia pycnantha).

I really like these next two as they show how the little gum nut grows into the flower it will eventually be. You can see how the flower pushes outwards to eventually split the top off the nut in the first image. The top of the nut stays on like a little hat and then eventually falls off.

The second image shows the flower after the top of the nut has fallen off completely. The flower, still folded away inside the half-nut, will push out some more and eventually bloom as in the top two images. I think it's pretty cool.

I've tried to show the blooming process of the Acacia flowers below although it's not quite as dramatic, or as easily shown. Those little yellow flowers are very small and are hard to shoot. There's an image of how the flower bud forms and how it then opens up though, quite differently, to the Flowering Red Gum.

It forms little roundish bundles on the flower-head and then each opens up as you can see in the very last image below.

Taking these shots added a nice element to my hike today, bringing them home and shooting them, as if a hike needs anything to make it more awesome than it already is. Thanks for taking a look and if you have any comments you know how to do so, and where.