Louise Down Under: The Royal Botanical Gardens Revisited

Once again, I'm starting a post with a bird. Because. Though I mostly want to talk about the Royal Gardens, I don't want to forget to tell you about the Lorakeets. The image to the left is Not a Lorakeet. It's a Butcher Bird. Once again, my avian photography is not world class. I like the Butcher birds just fine, but last night, on our post-dinner walk, John and I heard and "saw" hundreds of Lorakeets in Royal Park, across from our house. The word "saw" is in quotation marks because they are back-lit in flight it's hard to see their amazing colors how breathtakingly beautiful they are. And then, you catch a good look and it almost stops your heart, so beautiful are they. I mentioned them before, but had no idea how many there were.

Lorakeets. Not my image. . .

My first childhood pet, Fletcher-the-parakeet, and Galen's parakeets come to mind. I feel kissed by God when I see/hear/feel their very remarkable presence.

Now. for the Royal Botanical Gardens. I saw my old nemesis, The Norfolk Island Pine, and actually had verification of my identification by the lovely Tour Guide, Jenny.

I realize now that I was thrown off the scent because these trees in the garden, and around town, have a different branch conformation than the ones we grow as houseplants at home. Their splays of sub-lateral branches are definitely formed in an upward "V" shape, whereas the ones we're used to have more of a flattened conformation. And silly me. I had thought that Norfolk Island was off the North American coast. . . off of Virginia, where, of course, where lies Norfolk Virginia. No, Virginia, there is no Norfolk Island Pine there. Turns out that Norfolk Island is an island in the south Pacific that is roughly halfway between the middle of the Australian continent and the top tip of the North Island of New Zealand. Who knew? This family, Araucariaceae, is quite primitive, and any species belonging to it in the Northern Hemisphere died out during the Cretacious-Paleogene extinction event.

Wow. I've been looking for an excuse to legitimately use those words for my whole life. That's the same event that took the dinosaurs. Anyway, the reason they look so amazing to us, we me anyway, is because they are so unique. They are unlike anything we have in the northern hemisphere. Here are some members of that family of plants, only 3 of which are native to Australia. And since the blogger.com image mover is making me crazy, I'll continue in the next post!