Jump to content

Cephalotus follicularis near Walpole, WA


Recommended Posts

Hello,

one of the most exciting plants we saw in WA was for sure Cephalotus.

The site was a sandy cliff near Walpole, where the plants grew directly at the vertical cliffwall.

imgp9330.jpg

The plants were not easy to find because fully overgrown with vegetation (and therefore mostly green in colour) and difficult to reach in 2-4 m height at the wall. It took me quite some time to find a suitable spot to prepair a little path, so my two ladies could safely follow.

First interesting plant I saw was this beautiful spider orchid. Not bad for the beginning!

imgp9199.jpg

Strange beauty, isn't it?

imgp91992.jpg

But so far no Cephalotus. Instead some beautiful Drosera pulchella.

imgp9219.jpg

In fact those pulchella were my guides to finallly find the desired plants. A first pitcher covered in the grasses turned out to be a huge group of pitchers:

imgp9220.jpg

Many plants were green, but even those pitchers had red peristomes and colourful markings at the lids:

imgp9223.jpg

imgp9228.jpg

imgp9252.jpg

imgp9272.jpg

imgp9320.jpg

imgp9337.jpg

Here another impression of the habitat - Vera got a good shot, with Cephalotus in front of me, the sea below, and sleepy Ilva on the back :wink:

imgp9317.jpg

Nice plant at a very scenic spot!

imgp9353.jpg

Hope you like it -

Martin

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks :smile: yes, it is really thrilling to find them in habitat. And good that it wasn't too easy... well I remember we came to the site late in the afternoon, and I had a very good - but some years old - location description. So the plan was to get to the plants, use the last half an hour of sunlight to make some photos in the setting sun, have a beer and chill. So I got my camera, two cans of Emu Export, some additional lenses for the sundown and scenery, and went on... How snobby is that :wink: but I got my rightful punishment :biggrin:

Well, the cliff where the expected plants should grow had long come down, I had to move further and further, without finding anything! Long after sunset I finally had to give up and hardly found a way back to where I had started.

Next day it took me three attempts to reach a promising part of the cliff and some more hours to succeed - but thats the better way of course!

Edited by Martin Hingst
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Martin

when I was there 6 years ago there were thousands of cephalotus on the cliff along with many sundews. The beach was around 3 metres deep and in some cases part of the cliff had fallen onto the beach but cephs were still growing on the fallen rocks. I guess that cephs are quite salt tolerant.

A local contact told me that they had had significant problems with plants being stolen but that the numbers increase again in a few years.

Thanks for the great photos.

Dennis

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes Earl - exciting fits, esp. up to the first find!

Sorry to hear that Dennis, I thought the plants were lost due to the collapse of the cliff at that edge. Maybe a mixture of both. Something similar I've heard recently about the type location of D. citrina... cannot really understand this, as these plants are so easily available commercially.

Luckily there are many locations even more difficult accessible and less known - better to keep the secrets.

Regards

Martin

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is the first time I've seen good wild Ceph pics with perspective to a person next to it and a river...Very cool images indeed!! Thanks for sharing...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dexter - the "river" is actually an inlet, so more the sea than a river.

Carl, most probably a Dampiera, of the Goodeniaceae family, that is full of plants in incredible colours. Reminds me that I wanted to write a topic on the Lechenaultia plants... if you like colours, that should be interesting for you. Maybe tonight.

Regards

Martin

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...