Sunday 27 September 2015

GALAH

The galah Eolophus roseicapilla, also known as the rose-breasted cockatoo, galah cockatoo, roseate cockatoo or pink and grey, is one of the most common and widespread cockatoos, and it can be found in open country in almost all parts of mainland Australia. It is endemic on the mainland and was introduced to Tasmania, where its distinctive pink and grey plumage and its bold and loud behaviour make it a familiar sight in the bush and increasingly in urban areas.

It appears to have benefited from the change in the landscape since European colonisation and may be replacing the Major Mitchell's cockatoo in parts of its range. The term galah is derived from gilaa, a word found in Yuwaalaraay and neighbouring Aboriginal languages.


Galahs are about 35 cm long and weigh 270–350 g. They have a pale grey to mid-grey back, a pale grey rump, a pink face and chest, and a light pink mobile crest. They have a bone-coloured beak and the bare skin of the eye rings is carunculated. They have grey legs. The genders appear similar, however generally adult birds differ in the colour of the irises; the male has very dark brown (almost black) irises, and the female has mid-brown or red irises. The colours of the juveniles are duller than the adults. Juveniles have greyish chests, crowns, and crests, and they have brown irises and whitish bare eye rings, which are not carunculated.

This post is part of the Saturday Critters meme,
and also part of the Camera Critters meme.


Friday 25 September 2015

FRIDAY GREENS #39 - HORSE IN PADDOCK

Welcome to this meme active every Friday. The theme is "Friday Greens" and you can post images, art, photos where the predominant colour is GREEN!

GREEN is the colour between blue and yellow in the spectrum; coloured like grass or emeralds.
I appreciate your comments, and please add a link back to this page from your own Friday Greens blog post.
The meme is only as successful as you make it be! Please add your own GREEN post using the Linky tool below:

Thursday 24 September 2015

DUTCH IRIS "SYMPHONY"

Dutch iris (Iris x hollandica) "Symphony" produces beautiful flowers that have cool pale lilac/ grey standards and cheerful canary yellow falls - an unusual but pretty colour combination. It blooms in Spring and is ideal for flowerbeds with good drainage. Once in bloom they make great cut flowers. Height 65cm.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.



Wednesday 23 September 2015

AUSTRALIA

Australia (officially the Commonwealth of Australia), is an Oceanian country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area. Neighbouring countries include Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north; the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east; and New Zealand to the south-east.

For at least 40,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who spoke languages grouped into roughly 250 language groups. After the European discovery of the continent by Dutch explorers in 1606, Australia's eastern half was claimed by Great Britain in 1770 and initially settled through penal transportation to the colony of New South Wales from 26 January 1788. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades; the continent was explored and an additional five self-governing crown colonies were established.

On 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Since Federation, Australia has maintained a stable liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy comprising six states and several territories. The population of 23.6 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated in the eastern states and on the coast.

Australia is a developed country and one of the wealthiest in the world, with the world's 12th-largest economy. In 2014 Australia had the world's fifth-highest per capita income. Australia's military expenditure is the world's 13th-largest. With the second-highest human development index globally, Australia ranks highly in many international comparisons of national performance, such as quality of life, health, education, economic freedom, and the protection of civil liberties and political rights. Australia is a member of the United Nations, G20, Commonwealth of Nations, ANZUS, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), World Trade Organization, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, and the Pacific Islands Forum.

Australian forests are mostly made up of evergreen species, particularly eucalyptus trees in the less arid regions; wattles replace them as the dominant species in drier regions and deserts. Among well-known Australian animals are the monotremes (the platypus and echidna); a host of marsupials, including the kangaroo, koala, and wombat, and birds such as the emu and the kookaburra. Australia is home to many dangerous animals including some of the most venomous snakes in the world.

This post is part of the Outdoor Wednesday meme,
and also part of the  Wordless Wednesday meme,
and also part of the ABC Wednesday meme.


Friday 18 September 2015

FRIDAY GREENS #38 - ALOE POLYPHYLLA

Aloe polyphylla (spiral aloe, kroonaalwyn, lekhala kharetsa) is a species in the genus Aloe and family Xanthorrhoeaceae that is endemic to the Kingdom of Lesotho in the Drakensberg mountains. It is well known for its strikingly symmetrical, five-pointed spiral growth habit.

Aloe polyphylla is a stemless aloe and grows its leaves in a very distinctive spiral shape. The plants do not seem to sucker or produce off-shoots, but from the germination of their seeds they can form small, dense clumps. The fat, wide, serrated, gray-green leaves have sharp, dark leaf-tips. This aloe flowers at the beginning of summer, producing red-to-pink flowers at the head of robust, branched inflorescences.

The species is highly sought after as an ornamental but is difficult to cultivate and usually soon dies if removed from its natural habitat. In South Africa, buying or collecting the plant is a criminal offence.

I appreciate your comments, and please add a link back to this page from your own Friday Greens blog post.
The meme is only as successful as you make it be!

Please add your own GREEN post using the Linky tool below:

Thursday 17 September 2015

CANDY STRIPE PHLOX

Phlox subulata 'Candy Stripe' (=Moss Phlox USDA Zone: 2-9) is a popular garden cultivar of phlox. There are many selections of Moss Phlox, all of them forming a low mound or cushion of dark green needle-like leaves, smothered by tiny flowers in late spring. This variety produces a showy display of rose-pink flowers, each petal striped with white. Clip plants lightly immediately after blooming to encourage a dense habit. Wonderful in the sunny rock garden, for edging, or in mixed containers. Clumps may be ripped apart and divided in early Autumn, after 3 to 4 years. Requires good drainage. Drought tolerant, once established.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

Friday 11 September 2015

FRIDAY GREENS #37 - BANANA TREE

Musa is one of two or three genera in the family Musaceae; it includes bananas and plantains. Around 70 species of Musa are known, with a broad variety of uses. Though they grow as high as trees, banana and plantain plants are not woody and their apparent "stem" is made up of the bases of the huge leaf stalks. Thus, they are technically gigantic herbs.

The genus Musa was first named by Carl Linnaeus in 1753. The name is a Latinisation of the Arabic name for the fruit, mauz (موز). The word "banana" came to English from Spanish and Portuguese, which in turn apparently obtained it from a West African language (possibly Wolof).

From the time of Linnaeus until the 1940s, different types of edible bananas and plantains were given Linnaean binomial names, such as Musa cavendishii, as if they were species. In fact, edible bananas have an extremely complicated origin involving hybridisation, mutation, and finally selection by humans. Most edible bananas are seedless (parthenocarpic), hence sterile, so they are propagated vegetatively. The giving of species names to what are actually very complex, largely asexual, hybrids (mostly of two species of wild bananas, Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana) led to endless confusion in banana botany. In the 1940s and 1950s, it became clear to botanists that the cultivated bananas and plantains could not usefully be assigned Linnean binomials, but were better given cultivar names.

I appreciate your comments, and please add a link back to this page from your own Friday Greens blog post.
The meme is only as successful as you make it be!

Please add your own GREEN post using the Linky tool below:

Thursday 10 September 2015

APRICOT BLOSSOM

An apricot is a fruit or the tree that bears the fruit of several species in the genus Prunus (stone fruits). Usually, an apricot tree is from the species P. armeniaca.

The apricot is a small tree, 8–12 m tall, with a trunk up to 40 cm in diameter and a dense, spreading canopy. The leaves are ovate, 5–9 cm long and 4–8 cm wide, with a rounded base, a pointed tip and a finely serrated margin. The flowers are 2–4.5 cm in diameter, with five white to pinkish petals; they are produced singly or in pairs in early spring before the leaves.

The fruit is a drupe similar to a small peach, 1.5–2.5 cm diameter (larger in some modern cultivars), from yellow to orange, often tinged red on the side most exposed to the sun; its surface can be smooth (botanically described as: glabrous) or velvety with very short hairs (botanically: pubescent). The flesh is usually firm and not very juicy. Its taste can range from sweet to tart. The single seed is enclosed in a hard, stony shell, often called a "stone", with a grainy, smooth texture except for three ridges running down one side.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

Saturday 5 September 2015

CROWN REFLECTIONS

Crown Casino and Entertainment Complex is a large casino and entertainment precinct located on the south bank of the Yarra River, in Melbourne, Australia. Crown Casino is a unit of Crown Limited. Crown's casino complex opened in 1997, after moving from a temporary location that opened in 1994 and was on north bank of the Yarra. It is one of the central features of the Southbank area in the central business district and the Crown Promenade fronts onto the waterfront as part of Southbank Promenade. The entire complex has a space of 510,000 m² which is equivalent to two city blocks, making it the largest casino complex in the Southern Hemisphere and one of the largest in the world.

The foyer area seen here often hosts special displays and light shows that draw crowds of onlookers. Recently there has been some development of this part of the foyer with retail outlets taking up part of the floorspace.

This post is part of the Saturday Silhouettes meme,
and also part of the Weekend Reflections meme.


Friday 4 September 2015

FRIDAY GREENS #36 - LEAVES

Welcome to this meme active every Friday. The theme is "Friday Greens" and you can post images, art, photos where the predominant colour is GREEN!

GREEN is the colour between blue and yellow in the spectrum; coloured like grass or emeralds.
I appreciate your comments, and please add a link back to this page from your own Friday Greens blog post.
The meme is only as successful as you make it be!

Please add your own GREEN post using the Linky tool below:

Thursday 3 September 2015

JASMINE

Jasminum polyanthum, also known as Pink Jasmine (or White Jasmine), is an evergreen twining climber native to China and Burma (Myanmar). It produces an abundance of reddish-pink flower buds in late winter and early spring, followed by fragrant five-petalled star-like white flowers which are about 2 cm in diameter. It has compound leaves with 5 to 7 leaflets which are dark green on the upper surface and a lighter green on the lower surface. The terminal leaflet is noticeably larger than the other leaflets. The plant is very vigorous and can grow up to 6 metres in height when supported. Depending on the climate, this vine has a semi-deciduous to evergreen foliage.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme,
and also part of the Friday Greens meme.