CITY SUNRISE

Sunrise in Melbourne City on the Yarra River.

This post is part of the Skywatch Friday meme,
and also part of the Saturday Silhouettes meme,
and also part of the Weekend Reflections meme,
and also part of the Scenic Weekends meme.

FRIDAY GREENS #70 - CORREA

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.

Correa reflexa, commonly known as common correa or native fuchsia, is a shrub which is endemic to Australia. The species was first formally described in 1800 by botanist Jacques Labillardière in 'Relation du Voyage à la Recherche de la Pérouse' based on the type from Adventure Bay in southern Tasmania. He gave it the name Mazeutoxeron reflexum. The species was transferred to the genus Correa in 1803 by Étienne Pierre Ventenat in Jardin de la Malmaison.

Plants are quite variable and a large number of varieties and local forms have been identified. Heights vary from prostrate to 1.5 metres high. Leaves are generally oval in shape and range from 10mm to 50mm long. Their surfaces often have visible oil glands and short hairs. The pendant, tubular flowers occur in groups of 1 to 3 and are up to 40 mm long with 4 flaring triangular tips. Colour is variable including pale green, red with yellow tips and other variations.

This post is also part of the Floral Friday Fotos.

Please link back to this page if taking part in the meme, and in the spirit of community, please visit other participants to see their photos and leave a comment, which is always appreciated!

Please add your own Friday Greens entries using the Linky tool below:

ICE PLANT

Aptenia cordifolia is a species of succulent plant in the ice plant family known by the common names heartleaf, ice plant and baby sun rose. Perhaps the most common plant seen under this name is actually Aptenia 'Red Apple', a hybrid with red flowers and bright green leaves, whose parents are A. cordifolia and A. (Platythyra) haeckeliana.

The true species of A. cordifolia has magenta purple flowers and more heart-shaped, mid-green, textured leaves. Native to southern Africa, this species has become widely known as an ornamental plant. It is a mat-forming perennial herb growing in flat clumps on the ground from a woody base. Stems reach up to about 60 centimetres long. The bright green leaves are generally heart-shaped and up to 3 centimetres long. They are covered in very fine bumps.

Bright pink to purplish flowers appear in the leaf axils and are open during the day. The fruit is a capsule just over a centimetre long. The hybrid, Aptenia 'Red Apple', has, in some areas, escaped cultivation and now grows as an introduced species. Its far more vigorous growth and ability to root from small bits of stem makes it a poor choice for planting adjacent to wild lands as it can overwhelm native plants.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

POPPY

Papaver somniferum

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,
and also part of the Nature Footstep Digital Art Meme.

COOBER PEDY, SOUTH AUSTRALIA

Coober Pedy is a town in northern South Australia, 846 km north of Adelaide on the Stuart Highway. According to the 2011 census, its population was 1,695 (953 males, 742 females, including 275 indigenous Australians). The town is sometimes referred to as the "opal capital of the world" because of the quantity of precious opals that are mined there.

Coober Pedy is renowned for its below-ground residences, called "dugouts", which are built in this fashion due to the scorching daytime heat. The name "Coober Pedy" comes from the local Aboriginal term kupa-piti, which means "boys’ waterhole". Opal was found in Coober Pedy on 1 February 1915; since then the town has been supplying most of the world's gem-quality opal. Coober Pedy today relies as much on tourism as the opal mining industry to provide the community with employment and sustainability. Coober Pedy has over seventy opal fields and is the largest opal mining area in the world.

This post is part of the Our World Tuesday meme,
and also part of the Ruby Tuesday meme,
and also part of the Trees & Bushes meme,
and also part of the Travel Tuesday meme,
and also part of the Wordless Wednesday meme.

EVENING WALK

This post is part of the Skywatch Friday meme,
and also part of the Saturday Silhouettes meme.

FRIDAY GREENS #69 - APPLES

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.

Please link back to this page if taking part in the meme, and in the spirit of community, please visit other participants to see their photos and leave a comment, which is always appreciated!

Please add your own Friday Greens entries using the Linky tool below:

DAHLIA

Dahlia is a genus of bushy, tuberous, herbaceous perennial plants native mainly in Mexico, but also Central America, and Colombia. A member of the Asteraceae dicotyledonous plants, related species include the sunflower, daisy, chrysanthemum and zinnia.

There are at least 36 species of dahlia, with hybrids commonly grown as garden plants. Flower forms are variable, with one head per stem; these can be as small as 5.1 cm diameter or up to 30 cm ("dinner plate"). This great variety results from dahlias being octoploids (that is, they have eight sets of homologous chromosomes), whereas most plants have only two. In addition, dahlias also contain many transposons (genetic pieces that move from place to place upon an allele), which contributes to their manifesting such great diversity.

The stems are leafy, ranging in height from as low as 30 cm to more than 1.8–2.4 m. The majority of species do not produce scented flowers or cultivars. Like most plants that do not attract pollinating insects through scent, they are brightly coloured, displaying most hues, with the exception of blue.The dahlia was declared the national flower of Mexico in 1963. The tubers were grown as a food crop by the Aztecs, but this use largely died out after the Spanish Conquest. Attempts to introduce the tubers as a food crop in Europe were unsuccessful.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

STATES OF "O"

When we did our big road trip through the USA many years ago I always found it interesting to take photos of registration number plates on cars, trucks and trailers. I collected many tens of photos of number plates from nearly every state.

There are only three states in the USA that begin with the letter "O":

Oregon, Ohio and Oklahoma.

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

NEW ZEALAND SOUTH ISLAND

The South Island or Te Waipounamu is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand, the other being the smaller but more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasman Sea, and to the south and east by the Pacific Ocean. The South Island covers 150,437 square kilometres and is influenced by a temperate climate. As it has a 32% larger landmass than the North Island, it is sometimes referred to as the "mainland" of New Zealand, especially by South Island residents; however, only 23% of New Zealand's 4.6 million inhabitants live in the South Island.

In the early stages of European (Pākehā) settlement of the country, the South Island had the majority of the European population and wealth due to the 1860s gold rushes. The North Island population overtook the South in the early 20th century, with 56% of the population living in the North in 1911, and the drift north of people and businesses continued throughout the century.

It is divided along its length by the Southern Alps, the highest peak of which is Aoraki/Mount Cook at 3754 metres, with the high Kaikoura Ranges to the northeast. There are eighteen peaks of more than 3000 metres in the South Island. The east side of the island is home to the Canterbury Plains while the West Coast is famous for its rough coastlines such as Fiordland, very high proportion of native bush, and Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers. The dramatic landscape of the South Island has made it a popular location for the production of several films, including The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

We have visited New Zealand many times and always enjoy the rugged, unspoilt beauty of the South Island. Here are some photos flying over the mountainous terrain of the Southern Alps and then emerging onto the Canterbury plains.

This post is part of the Our World Tuesday meme,
and also part of the Travel Tuesday meme,
and also part of the Wordless Wednesday meme.