Nature Notebook - April 2014

There's a place I've been wanting to visit ever since a couple of my older boys told me of their discovery. It's a bike trail but it's accessed via a bush track which is difficult to navigate with a bike. So I didn't ride but helped my daughter and her little friend carry their bikes through the places they couldn't get through (or up!)  without help to get to where you can actually ride. Then the four of them (two older boys had gone there earlier on their own) took off on the trail and I jogged along and took some photos in between gasps for air.
I saw what I thought was cattails from a distance but on closer inspection proved to be Pampas grass Cortaderia selloana. It looked lovely swaying in the breeze but it's considered to be a weed here.

This was an interesting spot as it had been back-burned for fire hazard reduction in the wooded areas which the bike trail passed through and new growth jumped out here and there in splashes of green.

It's always ugly and bleak for a while after a back-burn

I think this is a type of Xanthorrhoea, a genus of flowering plant native to Australia commonly known as blackboy

A lovely flush of green amongst the charred landscape

The larger gums remain intact during a back-burn, which is done to reduce the amount of ground fuel in case of a fire 

?Wild Carrot (Daucus carota) was introduced into the colony of Sydney as seed for food production between 1786 and 1798 by Sir Joseph Banks.  

I might be mistaken but I think this may be what is know in North America as Queen Anne's Lace - maybe someone more knowledgeable can let me know if I am correct.

Some sort of very dry, papery fungi that I've never seen before. It looks like it belongs in the ocean.

The created world is to be prized for its usefulness, loved for its beauty and esteemed as the gift of God to His children. (A.W. Tozer)