Amperea xiphoclada

A wiry shrub to 60cm high, apparently leafless, with several strongly ridged stems arising from a woody rootstock - NPOS p.165

I found this one just out the back of the house. In the close up picture you can just see the tiny tiny leaves. They’re barely noticeable, growing straight out of the stems, on some you can see serrated margins.

Kalanchoe fedtschenkoi

It took a while to track this one down. The way I did it in the end was to type in a loose description of the plant into Google Images and look for a picture that matched. “bell like orange flowers succulent” did the trick.

From what I could find these plants are a native of Madagascar. A previous owner of the house or a neighbor must have liked them, they are running wild all through our garden.

Phyllurus platurus

This little guy was sitting behind a drainage box I’d removed to clean. There are often geckos to be found under the house, not usually out in the open like this though. Searching around and looking at pictures this looks like a Phyllurus platurus, supposedly quite common in the Sydney area.

Pultenaea stipularis

“An erect shrub to 2m high” NPOS p.88

There’s a bush pea in the backyard, a large part of it was broken off last year ( I think by a wallaby ) but it seems to be surviving well. These pictures are of a plant in the bush just above Bert Oldfield oval.

Platycerium bifurcatum

A large epiphytic fern, found on tree branches overhanging streams. NPOS p. 317

Another unusual plant, and although this one wasn’t on a branch overhanging a stream it was very close.

Mat and I left home at 4am to meet Dick and his team while they were coming through on the Oxfam trailwalker 100k walk. The walk down in dark was fun, It was a foggy but remarkably warm winter morning, we heard bounding and crashing in the bush that must have been wallabies, also saw a possum or two and heard the soft beating of large wings in the trees above us that I reckon must have been owls.

These Lavender scallops run wild all through our garden. I’m indifferent to them, they can stay for now but I’ll have no qualms about pulling them up to make way for something else.