#yellow plants australia

[branchflowerphoto]

delicate little daisies

[nuytsia]

Bearded Iris

[ethereyel]

[anotheranotherphotographyblog]

Yellow Pigface

[rainsroaming]

Patersonia umbrosa var. xanthina opening its flower in the morning <3

yellow flowers from aug-december

[calandrinon]

I have no idea how accurate this is but it is so pretty and I want one

Herbs in Europe

[amnhnyc]

Need a plump bird to brighten your day? Meet the Orange-bellied Parrot (Neophema chrysogaster)! This endangered species can be spotted throughout parts of Australia, including Tasmania. It prefers salt marshes and scrublands, where it forages for plants and seeds. Males and females have green plumage with blue markings, but males tend to be brighter in color, with more distinct patches of orange and yellow.

Photo: JJ Harrison, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

[jayrockin]

Avian Homeplanet

Star: F-class (yellow white) Vegetation: blue and black Axial tilt: 11 degrees Gravity: 1.12 g Position from star: fourth

Over 90% ocean and blasted by the light of an intense star, the avian homeplanet is prone to hot, humid weather and enormous monsoon storms. In spite of this, the planet’s very slight axial tilt gives its poles a coating of year-round sea ice, whose sifting, dune-like surface plays host to a strange variety of slow growing plants and hardy animals. On solid land, the dominant photosynthetic life is a clade of “plants” ranging from dark blue to cerulean, and a clade of sessile tube-dwelling “landworms” with black flesh and frond-like appendages. Their dark colors selectively absorb and reflect the harsh, high-UV light of the sun.

The crust of the planet also has an usually large amount of the element cobalt. It compromises over 5% of the planet’s crust, comparable to iron on Earth. Cobalt compounds generally have a much higher solubility in water than iron compounds, though, and the avian oceans are stained a purplish red from huge amounts of dissolved cobalt nitrate, cobalt chloride, and cobalt carbonate. Mineral veins of cobalt compounds can be found commonly in the planet’s rocks, forming streaks of red, blue, black, green, and sometimes yellow depending on composition. Sand and soil are sometimes stained purple and blue by cobalt salts, as well.

The clade of avians has a difficult evolutionary history to track, given the limited amount of dry land and intense development over the past thousand years. The current theory is that a flying sophont ancestor originated on the planet’s largest landmass, an Australia-sized continent, and radiated outwards to evolve into the 5 extant species of avians.

In modern history, avians have often run into space issues developing their societies, and metal as a resource has been at the center of some particularly bitter wars. Most land on the homeplanet is currently colonized by the Dominion of Tiiliit, and now in the space age, imported metal and helium is being used to add new land in the form of artificial islands and floating cities.

Avians tend to use simple, writable icons to represent their nations. Though traditionally, the Hotsuuv nations use local cultivated varieties of seal fruit as icons, and the mineral rich south pole uses dots of pigment.

Map art rendered in Photopea by the stellar @cmaidaartworkblog! Edited in CSP by me.

PATREON | Runaway to the Stars

[mybeingthere]

Emily Kame Kngwarreye (1910 – 1996) is considered one of Australias most significant artists. Amazingly, she only began painting with acrylics in her late seventies but in a few short years became an artist of national and international standing.

Emily was the first female painter to emerge from an art movement dominated by men and did so in a way that transformed Aboriginal painting. Employing a variety of styles over the course of her eight-year painting career, she painted her Country and sacred Dreamtime stories in a deeply emotional and expressive manner.

She was born around 1910 at Alhalkere (Soakage Bore), on the edge of the Utopia pastoral station, approximately 250km north-east of Alice Springs. Alhalkere was her fathers Country, and her mothers Country was Alhalpere, just to the east.

Despite being married twice, she had no children of her own but raised her relative Lily Sandover Kngwarreye and her niece Barbara Weir. Both becoming famous artists in their own right. Other nieces that also became famous artists include Gloria Petyarre, Kathleen Petyarre, Ada Bird Petyarre, Violet Petyarre and Nancy Petyarre.

Well before she became one of its most senior contemporary artists, Emily held a unique status within her community of Utopia. Her strong personality and past employment as a stock hand on pastoral properties in the area (at a time when women were only employed for domestic duties), reveals her forceful independence and trailblazing character.

Her age and ceremonial status also made her a senior member of the Anmatyerre language group. She was a senior custodian of cultural sites of her fathers country. She was considered the Boss Woman of the Alatyeye (pencil yam dreaming) and Kame (yam seed dreaming).

Emily started as a traditional ceremonial artist, beginning painting as a young woman as part of her cultural education. An important component of this education was learning the womens ceremonies, which are associated with in-depth knowledge of the Dreamtime stories and of womens social structures.

This knowledge is known as Awelye in Anmatyerre language. Awelye also refers to the intricate designs and symbols associated with womens rituals. These are applied to the womens upper chest, breasts and arms using fingers or brushes dipped into rich desert ochres.

Aboriginal art outside of ceremonial painting began in Utopia in 1977, when batik-making was introduced to women as part of an extended government-funded education program. In 1978, Emily was a founding member of the Utopia Womens Batik Group. In 1988, the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA) completed its first project with the Utopia Womens Batik Group. This became an exhibition called Utopia - A Picture Story.

From the beginning, Emilys art stood out from the others. Rather than filling her batiks with Aboriginal symbols, she preferred patterns of layered lines and dots that revealed plant, figurative forms and cell like structures. The 88 silk batiks from this first project were acquired by the Holmes a Court Collection in Perth.

In the same year the CAAMA shop initiated The Summer Project, introducing the Utopia womens batik group to the use of acrylic paints on canvas. Among the 81 paintings completed was Emilys first artwork on canvas, Emu Woman.

Inspired by the many Dreamtime stories of which she was a custodian, Emily employed an extraordinary array of styles over the course of her eight-year painting career.

In her early works, Emily preferred the use of an earthy ochre colour palette, reflecting her experience of using natural ochres during ceremonies. Over time she expanded her repertoire to include a dazzling array of colours found in the desert landscape. Colours are significant in her paintings. Yellow, for example, often symbolises the season when the desert earth begins to dry up and the Kame (yam seeds) are ripe.

Her shifting styles also reveal her self-confidence and willingness to experiment with form, pictorial space and artistic conventions. She drew creatively from the geographic landmarks that traverse her Country and the Dreaming stories that define it. Whenever she was asked to explain her paintings, her answer was always the same:

Whole lot, that's the whole lot. Awelye (my Dreamings), Alatyeye (pencil yam), Arkerrthe (mountain devil lizard), Ntange (grass seed), Tingu (a Dreamtime pup), Ankerre (emu), Intekwe (a favorite food of emus, a small plant), Atnwerle (green bean), and Kame (yam seed). That's what I paint; the whole lot.

This is because she chose to present a very broad picture of the land and how it supports the Anmatyerre way of life. Her artworks embrace the whole life story of the Dreamtime, seeds, flowers, wind, sand and everything. Although her works relate to the modern art tradition, this resemblance is purely visual. The emphasis in Emilys paintings is on the spiritual meaning, based in the tradition of her people.

The evolving styles of Emily Kame Kngwarreyes paintings

Emily started to paint in 1988. Her early style featured visible linear tracings following the tracks of the Kame (Yam Dreaming) and animal prints associated with the Emu Dreaming. Fields of fine dots partially obscured symbolic elements.

By 1992 her paintings were so densely packed with layers of dots that her symbolic underpainting was no longer visible.

Another evolution in her painting style occurred when she began to use large brushes. She worked faster, more loosely and on a larger scale. Sometimes dragging the brush while she dotted, producing lines from the sequential dots.

By the mid 1990s she had pioneered a style of Aboriginal painting referred to as dub dub works. They were created by using large brushes which were laden with paint and then pushed into the canvas in such a way that the bristles part and the paint is mixed on the canvas.

Using this technique, she created wildly colourful artworks and her paintings became progressively more abstract. Different artists from Utopia including Polly Ngale and Freddy Purla have subsequently adopted this style.

During the last two years of her life, she used the linear patterns found on womens ceremonial body designs as the primary inspiration for her paintings. The abstracted sequential dots of colour gave way to parallel lines which were much more formally arranged. She had used lines earlier before gradually submerging them under layers of dots. This time, she created simple, bold compositions of parallel lines in strong dark colours.

The above style in turn evolved to looser meandering lines which appear to trace the shapes of the grasses and the roots of the pencil yam as they forge their way through the desert sands.

In 1996 she produced a body of work in which she depicted pencil yam dreaming using a rich ochre colour palette. In this final burst of creative energy, Emily produced a beautiful body of work known as her scribble phase. In these atmospheric paintings, lines and dots were replaced by flowing fields of colour.

https://www.kateowengallery.com/.../Emily-Kame-Kngwarreye...

[lesbian-magicsings]

Fucking Australian manifestations of tma fears (I saw someone cover america and I went. Oh my god time to be Australian!)

The lonely; night buses, night trains, gas stations at like. 1am because they’re the only thing open, drive in movie theatres

The vast; the blue mountains just as a whole, cablecars (yummy), the regional train lines, the ferry system, walking around the Sydney city centre in rush hour

The dark; unlit outback roads, fucking bilbies (they’re nocturnal), and my apartments dimly lit parking lot

The spiral; the random alarms that blare for no reason at my local train station, Sydney trains in general. NSW transport is the spiral. My ass is not making it off one of those trains one day. Pretty sure the carriage change doors are yellow too

The web; our spiders. Obviously. Racing horses (betting specifically) and Australia’s collective alcohol addiction !

The eye; the phone rules in nsw schools. Crowded train stations at rush hour, the isle cameras in woolies. Those people who try to interview the unwilling in public

The buried; those holes we used to make at the beach as children, animal dens, and fucking home loan debt. #high interest rates #kill me housing is going to put me into dept dept. also rip currents at beaches

The stranger; antique stores. The creepy ones, that one circus I have seen come once ever in my memory that is advertised every year. Oh and like. The backstreets of cities and those cafes that just don’t look entirely right

The corruption; ALL OF AUSTRALIAS BUGS. And also those videos where they smack bus seats and they come out with so much dust my allergies would be done for. Also fucking head lice

The flesh; the large amount of beauty salons EVERWHERE and I mean everywhere,, the prevalence of fake tan in fucking high schools. Cannibalism on the Kokoda track

The hunt; the fucking war we had with emus. Oh and dingoes and Tasmanian tigers. Also the large rabbit population of Australia

The slaughter; large amount of venomous animals in Australia, that one abandoned military hospital, every single Australians deep road rage and traffic hatred.

The desolation; the bushfires. Bushfire season. Half of Australia’s plants seeds being activated by fire and some trees encouraging fire. Oh and those people who ask randoms for lighters in public (no I don’t have one on me because I look vaguely emo but thanks for asking me right in front of my father)

[branchflowerphoto]

A budding Showy Dryandra AKA Banksia Formosa with a gorgeous, glowing bud that is larger than a golf ball. All these plants and flowers I'm posting are growing wild on the 380 acre property where I live, which is mostly Australian native forest. I'm extra excited as spring approaches as this is my first flowering season after moving here last November 📷🌸💗

[nuytsia]

Conostylis

[najia-cooks]

苦菜 / Kucai (Chinese sowthistle stir-fry)

Common sowthistle (Sonchus oleraceus) is a hardy flowering plant in the family Asteraceae (alongside, for example, daisies, sunflowers, and dandelions). It is native to Europe and West Asia, but appears throughout the Americas, East Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. It is a common weed in recently disturbed soil, and sometimes pops up among and competes with cultivated crops.

Sowthistle is eaten as a bitter green in Chinese cuisine. The word "苦菜" (Mandarin Pinyin: kǔcài), from "苦" "kǔ" "bitter" + "菜" "cài" "vegetable" or "greens," is often used to refer to sowthistle—though it may also designate other bitter greens, including garlic chives.

This recipe prepares sowthistle as Chinese bitter greens are generally prepared: blanched in salted water, then fried with ginger and garlic. The sweetness and pungency of the aromatics round out the earthy bitterness of the sowthistle, making a dish that's excellent as a side with soup or rice. Here, I used it to top a fried tofu sandwich with a soy-sesame-ginger sauce.

Recipe under the cut!

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Identifying common sowthistle

Young plants grow from a rosette of waxy leaves with deep triangular lobes. Leaves growing from the stem are alternate (one leaf per node), simple (not divided into leaflets) and pinnatifid (divided, but the divisions do not go all the way to the midrib). Leaves have hairless midribs and clasp the stem at their base.

Stem is hairless and mostly unbranched, except near the apex. Stems terminate in clusters of flowers which are yellow when in bloom. Mature leaves and stems produce a white, milky latex when broken; not toxic, though quite bitter.

Young leaves, top two; mature plants, last three

If the leaf margins are covered in sharp spikes, you may be looking at spiny sowthistle. This plant is also edible, though it may not be worth the trouble to remove the spines to eat the mature leaves. Younger leaves, which generally form towards the center of the rosette, have softer spines and are edible without processing.

Young prickly sowthistle, left; mature prickly sowthistle, right

Common sowthistle may also be confused with common groundsel. Groundsel exudes a clear, not a milky, sap when broken, and its leaves are more deeply lobed. It is more densely branched and its leaves are waxier. Common groundsel is toxic and should not be consumed in large quantities.

Common groundsel

Ingredients:

Large bunch common sowthistle leaves (Sonchus oleraceus), preferably young

1/2-inch chunk (5g), scrubbed and thinly sliced

2 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced

Neutral oil, to fry

Toasted sesame oil, to top

Salt, to taste

Instructions:

1. Wash leaves thoroughly in a bowl filled with water. Pull leaves out to allow dirt to sink to the bottom. Repeat.

2. Boil leaves in salted water for about 10 minutes, until tender.

3. If desired, soak in cool water for 1-3 hours to remove some of the leaves' bitterness.

4. Heat oil in a wok or frying pan on medium-high. Fry ginger and garlic for 30 seconds, until fragrant. Add leaves and fry a minute or two.

5. Remove from heat and stir in sesame oil. Taste and adjust salt. Add a dash of mirin or rice vinegar to balance the bitterness, if desired.

[birdstudies]

November 11, 2023 - Yellow-plumed Honeyeater (Ptilotula ornata) Found in parts of southern Australia, these honeyeaters live in woodlands, especially those with eucalyptus. They eat arthropods, nectar, sugary liquids and structures produced by insects, and sometimes flowers and fruit, foraging alone, in pairs, and in small flocks. Breeding in all months, though more frequently from October to early December, they build shallow cup-shaped nests from grass, wool, spiderwebs, plant down, feathers, and sometimes other materials. Females lay clutches of one to three eggs and both parents feed the chicks.

[anotheranotherphotographyblog]

Lobed Tickseed or Mouse-Eared Tickseed

[moon-snailsss]

Flying foxes

Basics

Bats make up the taxonomic order Chiroptera. They are traditionally categorized into two groups. There are small micro bats (Microchiroptera) and MUCH larger mega bats (Megachiroptera). Only Micro bats have the ability to use echolocation! Mega bats do not, they actually rely on eyesight and smell to navigate!

Flying foxes or more formally Pteropus is a Genus of megabats which are some of the largest bats in the world! They are often referred to as “fruit bats” or “flying foxes.” I will be referring to them as flying foxes. They can reach a wing span of 5 feet. There are currently 60 extant(living) species of flying foxes! They inhabit, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Australia, East Africa and some islands in the Pacific and Indian Ocean. Most flying foxes are nocturnal. Unlike the majority of other bats, flying foxes don’t rely on echolocation to find food! They rely on their keen sense of sight and smell. They fly 9 to 40 miles every night to hunt. When feeding they spit out seeds, enabling plant growth!

Eye sight

As I previously mentioned, flying foxes cant echolocate so they rely on their sense of smell and their sight to hunt! They have really cool eye features/adaptations that enables them to see so well at night! (even better than us!)

Eyesight 101

Every animal has 2 types of cells in their eyes that allow them to see. We have rods, which help us see in low light and detect fast moving objects. They are concentrated in the outer areas of the retina and give us peripheral vision. Rods are 500 to 1,000 times more sensitive to light than cones. The second cells are cones, which allow us to tell the difference between colors and see more detail. There are 3 different cones, which allow us to see red, green, and blue wavelengths of visible light. Since we have all 3 they allow us to see the full color spectrum ( trichromatic vision ).

(Back to flying foxes) Flying foxes don’t have the type of cone to see red wavelengths. This also happens to humans! It’s the same condition that causes us to become red-green colorblind. Everything will appear in a blue or yellow tone. Flying foxes have around 10 times less cones than people, therefore they see less colors. To make up for the lack of cones, they’ve adapted even more rods. This gives flying foxes better low-light vision than people. It allows them to navigate very well at night by using roads, rivers and streetlights.

Chiropterophily

Chiropterophily is the pollination of plants and flowers by bats. More than 500 species of tropical plants are pollinated by nectar+pollen eating bats. There is evidence that trees in the Myrtacaea family have co-evolved with nocturnal foragers and use them to keep genetic diversity over wide ranges. These trees flower and produce nectar at night, and they have bright colored blooms that are easy for flying foxes to locate. Without flying foxes, it would be harder for these trees to maintain genetic diversity over long distances.

Habitat

Flying foxes live in tropical forests, wetlands and swamps. They need to live in large trees as their colonies consist of hundreds to thousands of bats! They live in paperback forests, eucalypt forests, and rainforests.

Diet

Flying foxes are herbivores and frugivores. They thrive off a diverse diet consisting mostly of fruits, leaves, pollen, and nectar. They prefer tropical fruits like bananas, mangoes as well as berries and figs. Flying foxes also consume leaves from a variety of trees and shrubs, and collect pollen from flowers. By feeding on these resources flying foxes aide in the pollination and seed dispersal in their ecosystems. This makes them a keystone species!

Here’s a source that can give you more insight on their eyesight: https://sydneybats.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Flying-foxes_are_very_visible_visual_bats_M_Graydon.pdf

That’s all, I hope you learned something new!!

Ps: The image I used is an Indian flying fox