Central Coast Goes for Gold - Acacias in Bloom

They might not be the gold medals that Australia is hoping to win at the next Olympic games but the gold I see every day is a winner with me. I love the winter when the Acacias cheer me up by flowering prolifically for months along the sides of highways, the Freeway and semi-country roads. I’ve read that an Acacia can be in flower somewhere in Australia on every single day of the year, but here on the Central Coast we have a little hiatus during late autumn early winter. Then the Acacias begin again and flower on and on, passing the baton one to another before the cycle begins again a year or so later.

On my 10 hectares I have four endemic Acacias, (Acacia irrorata ssp irrorata, Acacia maidenii, Acacia prominens and Acacia binervia, plus one introduced Acacia, Acacia podalyriifolia ) all flowering at different times and all looking quite different in leaf and flower.


Acacia irrorata ssp irrorata

Acacia maidenii



Acacia prominens












Acacia binervia








Acacia podalyriifolia
Once they were safely sorted in my mind I widened my search to the end of my road (2.75 km) and came up with another four, (Acacia suavolens, Acacia terminalis, Acacia falcata and Acacia ulicifolia.






.Acacia suavolens Beautifully perfumed





Acacia ulicifolia Pretty but pointy





.Acacia falcata

Acacia terminalis






















After that I decided to include my nearest cross-road, which is a rather long rural connection road, and along came more (Acacia longifolia, Acacia filicifolia, Acacia mearnsii, Acacia decurrens, Acacia hakeoides and another shrub somewhat like Acacia longifolia but with very pale flowers).




Acacia decurrens. I think of this one as bilious green wattle because to me the colour is not as attractive as some of the other yellows.




Acacia mearnsii (I think)




Acacia filicifolia



Acacia longifolia rather bedraggled in the rain




Pale version of Acacia longifolia
















Acacia hakeoides perhaps the most beautiful of them all.

If I include my general vicinity (Sydney region) then there are an astonishing 60-70 species of Acacias or wattles, all sharing generously their golden colour and special wattle perfume

Corymbia maculata syn. Eucalyptus maculata - Spotted Gum

Rainbow Lorikeets Trichoglossus haematodus are visiting our area again. Some people are lucky enough to have daily visits from these beautiful birds but we only see them occasionally. They turn up when their favourite gums are flowering.

At the moment it is the turn of the Spotted Gums.

Corymbia maculata produce oodles of nectar, and as rainbow lorikeets enjoy nectar as part of their diet they have been spending long hours partying at the tops of the trees, where most of the flowers are to be found.

Corymbia maculata are very tall trees that flower way, way up high, all over the top of the crown, making their flowers difficult to see from ground level. Even flowers closer to the ground merge in well with the leaves and the sky; particularly when the skies have been cloudy and grey as they have been much of the time this year.


Even the multi-coloured gaudy rainbow lorikeets manage to disappear into the canopy. You can see movement amongst the branches overhead but the birds themselves are difficult to see. They are not difficult to hear though because their distinctive noisy squabbling sounds are unmistakable as they greet each other and discuss the relative merits of this year’s bouquet,






Often the first indication of the flowering of Corymbia maculata; (which incidentally doesn’t occur every year, but every few years - estimates vary, depends who you talk to), is the rich smell of honey. These trees have seriously delicious smelling flowers. Take a look around underneath the canopy and you will see the odd fallen white to cream flower, or a little twiglet containing a couple of flowers and buds. These have been pinched off by over enthusiastic birds or possums.

The bud caps have a little point and are generally clustered in groups of 3 to 7 on small leafless shoots in axils of leaves towards the ends of the branchlets. In typical gum fashion the bud cap is pushed off by the unfurling stamens.



The flowers develop into large woody barrel shaped gum nuts with deeply enclosed valves

Corymbia maculata has bark that sheds right to the ground in small pieces. They don’t make quite the same mess as other similar looking gums because the shed bark can be cardboard thin, unlike Eucalyptus propinqua, which sheds huge slabs of quite thick bark.

Some people think the Spotted Gums are so named because when they are shedding their bark they can have quite a mottled appearance. I believe the name may have been given because of the dimples on the tree trunk. Many look as if a giant has come along and given them little squeezes and pokes, almost as a child might with a piece of play dough and a stick. Some gums are more dimpled than others, and those are generally unmistakable Spotted Gums due to the markings on the trunk.





Highly spotty specimen

However there are specimens with just a few dimples.

Mottled areas with just a few dimples

Spotted Gum is not a good timber to use for sheds or other farm buildings as it is susceptible to lyctid borer attack and only lasts for a few years before needing replacement. This I know from bitter experience.

However it is a useful tree for building projects where it can be properly protected.

Corymbia maculata is well loved by bees and their keepers. It has high yields of nectar with a very high sugar content, particularly in the mornings and evenings. If you have spotted gums flowering in your area you should be able to smell their honey scent very easily, particularly in the evening.

Bees and birds aren’t the only animals appreciating the nectar of the Spotted gums. The evenings and nights bring out the bats who squeak and squabble as they take their share of the nectar and sometimes the grunt of a possum or two as they argue over whose tree it is joins the cacophony.

Once all the mottles fade the spotted gums can look very like a grey gum, except for those very dimpled specimens.

Here we have a spotted gum on the far left and a group of Eucalyptus propinqua on the right. Easy to see which is which now,



but just wait until they all fade to a uniform grey. Not so easy then.



Eucalyptus propinqua (Grey gum) left, Corymbia maculata (Spotted gum) right

The Spotted Gum is often mistaken for one of the grey gums or the lemon scented gums and vice versa. At certain times of the year they are difficult to tell apart. All are tall straight trees with smooth light grey bark for some of the year.

When the lemon scented gums are discarding their bark they can look very like a spotted gum or a grey gum. And when the grey gums and the spotted gums have finished discarding last year’s clothes and have freshly gained their smooth light grey bark they are again very much alike. Some times you have to watch the trees for a few seasons before you can be sure what they are.



Corymbia Citriodora - Lemon Scented Gum growing in the city






At other times you look at them and have no doubt in your mind.

Telling a lemon scented gum is easy, walk underneath, find a leaf, crush it and have a sniff. The strong lemon scent is a dead giveaway.

Unknown nest

Posted by Frank

Christine and I found this large nest on the ground in one of the less-frequented parts of our property. It's almost a metre across and still in use, judging by the green leaves on the inside.
We've no idea what it could be, or any clues to the animal that uses it.

Guioa semiglauca

This is a medium sized rainforest tree, round about 18m, but can grow taller in very good conditions, with a spotted smooth grey trunk. It has rather dull, dark green, thick leathery leaves, which are blueish grey underneath, hence the name semi-glauca.

Underside of leaves

The leaves are pinnate-compound with 2 to 6 pairs of leaflets, each 4 to 8cm long, with one single leaflet at the end of the stem. The leaves are quite heavily veined, ovate to elliptical, with a soft blunt tip at the apex in adult trees.

Older Leaves

Guioa semiglauca is still fairly common in protected coastal areas in rainforests along the east coast of Australia, from about Nowra to Mackay in North Queensland.

It took me years to recognize this tree in my patch of rainforest because it blends into the background very well. I find it much easier to figure out what tree is what if I have a flower or something I can use to track it down. With this tree it was just a nondescript rather dull tree for months on end. Now that I know it I can see that it is one of the backbone trees along the creek, which no doubt hold the creek banks together, provide habitat and shelter for bird and beast and also food at the appropriate time of the year.

There is nothing about the tree that makes it stand out - until it flowers in early spring. It doesn’t flower every year but when conditions suit it can be covered in masses of small lightly perfumed flowers.




This is not one of those fly-by-night trees that flaunt their blossom for a week or so. No, this tree begins slowly and builds to a crescendo of flowers as the weeks progress. The flowers are not particularly showy, being a greeny cream and very tiny, but in a good year, there are masses of them borne in dense clusters in the leaf axils. I admit this many are rather difficult to miss, but this year has been a particularly good one for many of the trees and so there was a mass bloom. I’ll be interested to see as the years pass just how often it flowers this prolifically.



In fact if you are not paying attention, even with lots of flowers, you may not notice the flowers at all as they blend in so well with their surroundings, but if you are bee or a butterfly or moth, you know they are there. Not only do they blend in well but they flower high in the canopy of the tree which is surrounded by other thick bush making them rather hard to see.

Before I had put a name to my trees I noticed one beginning to bud on the edge of the creek. I watched the buds develop and finally open and then noticed with great interest that thousands of bees visited and feasted on the nectar.

As successive trees opened their flowers, very high in the rainforest canopy, I could tell just by the drone of the bees, that something special was happening way up high, and then it took a pair of binoculars before I was sure.

Even before the buds of the Guioa semiglauca were fully opened it was attracting dozens, perhaps hundreds, of fluttering brown and orange tiny butterflies, Hypocista metirius in early October. It was a definite meeting point.




Once the flowers finish the tree maintains interest for a little longer with the attractive seed capsules, 8 – 12 mm wide.



These are flattened with 2 -3 wing like lobes which swell to contain brown seeds covered in an orange-red aril in summer.



Now it is the turn of the birds who find the seeds very attractive. Those that are not recycled this way fall to the ground and generally germinate. These young trees are browsed by wallabies and so not many make adult trees.



Very interesting news letter

ALLOCASUARINAS – Members of the Casuarinaceae

I have been seduced by a denizen of the Australian bush!



















I find myself drawn to him, I admire his stunning tall and handsome bronzed good looks. It’s true his wardrobe consists only of shades of brown, but he shines and gleams like burnished copper as he gently sways with the breezes and turns first this way and then that in the autumn sunshine. He may be wearing golden brown, rusty brown, or sometimes the thick gooey amber of thick, rich honey, but always, always - he attracts attention.

Most of the time the Casuarinas and Allocasuarinas take their place in the bush very modestly - without drawing attention to themselves at all – until they flower. And then surely it is “Look at me, look at me!”


The colour consists of hundreds and hundreds of skinny, long, male “flowers”, all swaying in the breeze, sending their pollen off on a journey, hoping they will land on a female “flower”.
The male flowers are actually stamens in spikes at tips of branches, but it’s easier to refer to them as flowers.






My interest in these small trees began long ago, before I had even heard of the Casuarinaceae, when I would drive my school aged children to the station along a road lined with Allocasuarina distyla, interspersed occasionally with the very attractive Allocasuarina torulosa. Every morning and afternoon in March and April, I would remark on how beautiful they were, and every time my children would look back at me and roll their eyes in disagreement - “But Mum they’re brown” was the chorus from the back seat. To them brown was not a colour to be admired. I never could persuade them otherwise.


And so it is with other people. People are often concerned for the health of my beautiful trees. They think the trees are dying and they allow a flicker of concern to curl around the tree as they speed past on their way to somewhere else. But if you take the time to stop, hop out of your car and inspect that glorious orange/brown coloured tree you will cease to be concerned and may be won over, as I am.

This photograph is Allocasuarina torulosa




Once all members of the Casuarinaceae family were Casuarinas but they have been reclassified due to some differences in the fruit, and we have gained the rather clumsy Allocasuarina, which are distinct from the Casuarina but still remain in the Casuarinaceae family. Ah, the mysterious ways of science.

All share the jointed cylindrical branchlets which remind people of a pine tree but there is no relationship at all. The Casuarinaceae are in a group all on their own and unlike the conifers which they resemble they are true flowering plants. The Casuarinaceae family is native to Australia, southeast Asia and islands of the Pacific.

My interest in these trees was rekindled a couple of years ago when I was in the bush searching for pretty flowers to photograph. I caught sight of the little red female flowers and was amazed. Amazed because I didn’t know about them. Amazed because I had never seen them before, amazed because they had never been drawn to my attention in any book I had read on native plants.


They are very small it is true but very attractive as they cluster in numbers along the branchlets.

I have discovered that there are always some flowers to be seen, though the greatest number occur now (March, April); at the same time as the males are flowering away brilliantly.























Sometimes the female flowers are a tawny shade of bronze to match the menfolk but more often they are red. They aren’t flowers so much as tiny brush-like clusters of reddish stigmas.

Some Allocasuarina trees have both male and female on the same tree which seems a much more sensible idea to me. Much less hit and miss with the fertilization technique.

In the case of Allocasuarina distyla the male and female flowers are on different trees, generally in close proximity. It is only when the male starts to flower that you can see the difference between the two.


Of course if you get out of your car and have a look you will see that all the female trees are clustered with cones at various stages of development, and so it becomes obvious which is which.

Even without the flowers I find the cones themselves attractive. The cones aren’t large, think thumbnail size.

When the time is right the cones split open and release the seed.



Farmers are not as enamoured as I of the casuarinas because nothing much will grow beneath the trees and some maintain that they somehow poison the ground. More study needs to be undertaken to figure out what is going on but for our purposes we will just acknowledge that they may be seriously defending their patch and continue to appreciate them for their beauty.