The air is full of fairies

When I was a little girl, we lived in a small rural town, and thistles were often a problem for the local farmers. At certain times of the year the thistles would flower and the seeds would float in the wind. My sister and I used to call them floating fairies. Well it has taken me a while to work out that what we have in the air now, are not thistle seeds but come from our native gum trees. The Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research is setting up a data base  of all the eucalypt specicies, there are 700 to 800 of them, and they are very important for Australia because this is the only tree our native Koala feeds on.

 

The air is thick with the seeds. It has taken me a while to figure out exactly what happens and how these seeds are liberated. When the tree flowers, the little spikey petals die and there is what we call a gumnut left in the middle. They hang in bunches,rather like fruit on a tree. BUT, it appears that when these gumnuts get warm and heat up to a certain point they split and free all the little seeds, packed up like sardines with parachutes on.

 

 

 

I took this picture at Currumbin Sanctuary. This wildlife park is probably the best on the Gold Coast for native animals, and we took our friend Debbie, a teaching friend from China who holidayed with us, to see the Koalas, Kangaroos etc.

 

 

From the picture above you can see the gumnuts.

Well these little fairies are like a white carpet on some of the lawns around here. We have a small mat by the back door with a table and chairs and hundreds of the are getting caught up on the mat.

 

They float in the swimming pool, and in the birdbath and even get caught in the little cracks in the concrete.

 

Fortunately they don't get into the house, the house we are house sitting at the moment has fly screens at every door and window.

 

The other thing of note today are ants.

 

I have noticed in past years that one or two days in November seem to be the time for flying ants to leave the nests and make new colonies. Well we have some big ants in Australia, some whoppers. And the flying ants are big too.

 

On this leaf is just one ant and one flying ant. The ones that fly can go some distance I think, and set up their own colony. Fabulous for the ant, not so fabulous for us. It was, though, fabulous for the birds, there were quite a few in the trees nearby swooping down and enjoying a feast on the wing.