Today, I went out into Sydney so I could go to the state library to do some studying. I do this every now and then as, when I’m at home, I get distracted by a cute cat, and housework like laundry, hoovering and the dishes so the studying doesn’t always get done as it could be!
As usual, I took a bit of a wonder through the botanic gardens. It was only a brief walk today as I was starving and wanted lunch! I took a different route to normal so that I could see some different plants. First up is this yellow-flowered canna lily. It’s a very pretty flower in a pretty colour.
The next two pictures are from the same rose bush. These flowers are really, really nice. Walking around the roses today, you could tell they were not getting too much attention as they will be getting cut back in a month or so, but this particular rose was still putting on a decent display.
This delightful number is apparently foxtail agave. I quite like the colour of the leaves and the feint vein pattern on them. I normally do put plenty of flowers up, but leaves can be great in their own way too.
We have another two roses, taken just because of the colours.
This tree is Araucaria columnar is, often called the New Caledonia pine. I love the shape of this rather shaggy looking tree, which is why I included it.
Below is a close up of the leaves of the above tree. They are very typical of the genus as a whole, which is a genus I am partial to-mainly because they were not common in England when I was growing up. I have a thing for the slightly odd plants of Australia and its neighbours!
This rather fine plant is Phormium tenax ‘Bronze Baby’-a cultivar of the normal New Zealand flax. I rather like this plant anyway, but the colour of this particular version is interesting, especially with the green leaves in the background.
This is a native Australian plant with the common name of ‘Kangaroo Paws’. They are in the genus of either Anigozanthos or Macropidia. I don’t have a clue which, I have to say and there wasn’t a label nest to this one, but they are a quirky sort of pretty and the colour is fab.
These leaves are interesting, I think it is a Coleus cultivar.
Here is another rose, this one was outside a gate to the gardens.
Close to the rose above are these palm trees that line the road outside the gardens. For palm trees, these look ok, and I normally hate these things with a passion! Ok is the best you can get.
This last photo is something I see this all the time and it is so ugly. I get it that councils, or whoever, have limited time and money for things like ‘weeding’ and ‘plant maintenance’ and any other such term, especially on a traffic island thing (where there are several pedestrian crossings going to it), but if you have to resort to ugly measures like this, why is the tree there? It’s not only ugly, screams of laziness-and laziness is inexcusable!
