Day: September 15, 2022

Categories
flowers Western Australia

The incredible plant diversity of Leuseur Plateau

15 September. Today ahs been one of the most amazing botanical days in my life! After leaving Karda campground, we head directly to Leuseur National Park. Arriving here, I quickly realise why David has been so insistent in including this place in the itinerary. This is a true heaven of botanical diversity. A series of flat-topped hills in a valley formed by hardened rock and filled with the sand of ancient shorelines, this relatively small place holds meter-by-meter more plant diversity than a tropical rainforest! The diversity of plants is such that 60% of the plant species found in Mount Leusueur (named by French explorers that noticed its flat top while sailing the nearby ocean) are not seen in Mount Michelle, a mere 1.5km away. What should be a couple hours of exploration, turns into a full day affair, as we cannot walk more than a few steps before discovering another bunch of amazing flowers that blows away even seasoned, local botanists. Among the many incredible species we find a few buzz-pollinated taxa. This is so exciting! Monocots and dicots y diverse plant families converge here in the typical Solanum buzz-pollinated morphology. I am certain that soon we will be finding a trove of buzz-pollinating bees. But the cool, windy weather has other plans for us. We search everywhere but, although we find hundred of honey bees feeding on the flowers of Eucalyptus and Banksia, we see not a single wild bee. We continue looking until the sun is about to set, and yet no wild bees at all.

–Do you have a plan B?, asks David.

I do not. I still have hope that when the weather turns (we have had a string of cool, overcast, or rainy days in what is supposed to be one of the sunniest places in the world, we should be able to find bees. Let’s see what tomorrow holds for the Buzz Bus.

Categories
Western Australia wildlife

Buzz Bus Departure

14 September. Departure day! Today we leave Perth after a slow start with a stop at the supermarket to stock on food for the next days. David and I leave on a sunny morning headed north. We leave the city and soon hit the first Eucalyptus forests. Driving along Indian Ocean Drive, we pass Yanchep and later in the afternoon reach the beautiful Nilgen Natural Reserve, where we stop to look for bees. Although we only find honeybees, we had a first chance to see many cool plants in the wild, including spar orchids, Banksia, and Hakea, and many more!

The day is going by fast, and the next decision is whether to stop at the Pinnacles Desert. Although likelihood of finding native bees here is low, we agree that this is a stop worth taking and decide to do a whistle tour of this incredible place. We are not disappointed and soon become enchanted by this alien and magic landscape. Against a backdrop of yellow sand, thousands of stone pillars stand up in the long shadows of the late afternoon. The stone columns can vary in height from a few tens of centimeters to more than two meters. Their origin of these structures remains a mystery and hypotheses range from precipitation in subterranean rivers to the trunks of ancient trees buried in sand. Regardless of how they are born, David and I spend some time among their bizarre forms and search for shapes among the stones. Some remind us of wizards, skulls, animals and many more! In the sand, we come across the tracks of a kangaroo, and follow them for a while, tracing the, sometimes enormous jumps of what we assume was a large kangaroo. In the outskirts of the park, we briefly see an emu, rivalling in size and African ostrich.

It is getting late, and we push towards our first campsite at camp Karda. The night is starting to set but as we pull in the dirt road, I see my first live wild kangaroo. Soon we realise that many more are coming out as the sun sets, and see a mom and jockey that graze the vegetation not far from where we set camp. After a dinner in the cool and rainy night, the sky opens and we are treated to an amazing display of the milkyway high in the sky. We take some night photos of stars and planets and go to bed, exhausted but excited. Sadly no bees today, but maybe tomorrow we find them.

Categories
Uncategorized

King’s Park

Today (13 September), we picked up the Buzz Bus! The campervan that will be our home for the next three weeks is very nice and with space to set up the lab to measure bees. After collecting the Buzz Bus, we drove to King’s Park in Perth where David and I met Ziggy, a researcher working at the Park studying the reproduction and population genetics of Australian plants. He had some great tips about plant watching and we had a ncie chat about the use of technology for studying pollinators. David and he work together in a cool project on a group of plants called Kangaroo Paws, and I learned that the Australian flora is particularly rich in bird-pollinated plants. Hopefully this doesn’t mean that bee pollinators will be hard to find! We spend the night in Perth, to prepare for the departure north the following day.

King’s Park is an amazing botanical garden. We spend way longer here than originally planned, but is impossible not to stop and admire the incredible collection of plants held here. Common and rare, small and enormous, the botanical garden has it all. My favourites include the baobab trees, the walking palms (Pandanus), and of course the beautiful views of Perth’s waterfront.