Spring holidays 2017, part 4

Yesterday and today we continued to explore Myall Lakes National Park and its surroundings.

The village of Hawks Nest is very touristic, and so it is perhaps not a surprise that it has a spring flower walk that is recommended to tourists. And indeed there are masses of flannel flowers, but also other interesting plants.

At the other end of the National Park we today visited the lighthouse at Sugarloaf Point. Shown here is the view towards Seal Rocks, which unfortunately wrecked many ships even after the lighthouse was built, apparently due to prevailing wind conditions during one part of the year.

Botanically today's topic is climbers. Our first one is Kennedia rubicunda (Fabaceae), with surprisingly large red flowers.

I am reasonably certain that this would have to be Geitonoplesium cymosum (Smilaceae), a climbing monocot. The field guide calls it 'scrambling lily'.

Finally, the native passionflower Passiflora herbertiana (Passifloraceae) had been teasing us for a few days now, always there but never in flower. Today we finally found it in bloom, and that made my day!

Oops. Upon examination of the Flora of NSW key to Passiflora it turns out that this is introduced Passiflora subpeltata from Brazil, as it has large, leafy stipules. Also the Flora says that native P. herbertiana is red, which is really interesting because Fairley & Moore's Native Plants of the Sydney Region, which serves as my quick reference in the field during this trip, shows it as white.

Either way the one we saw is not native. Still, passionflowers are just something else, and they remind me of past field work in the Andes.