Today is a little bit of this and that from the garden, just a couple of observations as I had a very quick look in the garden. It has been raining this afternoon, so didn’t want to spend too much time getting wet.
The first is that one lot of potato plants are in the process of developing flower buds. This is randomly exciting, as I haven’t seen potato flowers in the flesh before. Surprising really, considering I spent so much time as a kid pottering around my grandparents veg patch-although I was far more interested in the greenhouse, or causing mischief with my cousins and siblings!
Nasturtium flower season is now here for me. This, I think, is “Purple Emperor’-it is just a lot paler than the flowers on my other ‘Purple Emperor’ nasturtium plant, so I could well be wrong. Either way, I am so happy to find it in my garden.
Finally for today is a little visitor we had on Saturday. As it was a lovely warm day, we had the doors and windows open to let the air through and in came a damselfly, known as the common flatting, Austroargiolestes icteromelas.
Apparently, this species is usually found in streams and rivers, even when they dry to nothing but pools. It is a species native to the east coast of Australia. Two sub-species exist within its natural range. Austroargiolestes icteromelas ictermelas (pale mouth common flatwing) is found in the southern, cooler areas of the species range. The other sub-species, Austroargiolestes icteromelas nigrolabiatus, the black mouth common flatwing, is found in the northern and warmer areas of its range. Based on the range map in my reference book, I think this one is the pale mouth common flatwing (the first sub-species mentioned).
I enjoy seeing damselflies and dragon flies, especially when I actually get to have a good look at them. They are usually flying around too quickly for me to get a photo so it was nice to see over the weekend!
Theisinger, G., Hawking., Orr, A., (2021) The Complete Field Guide to Dragonflies of Australia, 2nd edn., CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne.