Bush-walking in the Tinderry Nature Reserve

Diuris sulphurea, or similar, one of several terrestrial orchids seen today.

 I'm currently staying with my friends Roger Farrow and Christine Kendrick at their home near Queanbeyan, New South Wales. They are enthusiastic members of the Australian Native Plants Society, and know the best sites for native plants over a wide radius. Today Roger took me on a foray into the trackless Tinderry Nature Reserve, an extensive tract of natural 'bush' on the slopes of a mountain, not very far away. While natural and remarkably free of invasive aliens, it is not undisturbed, as the section we visited had been burnt three years ago by a wide-ranging bush fire. The result, as seen today, was to destroy most of the trees and lower storeys of plants - temporarily. The Australian flora is fire-adapted, however, and now,assisted by two wet years, the vegetation is making its recovery. The Eucalyptus (of which 16 species are recorded for the reserve) have varying strategies for recovery: some regenerate from seed, others from basal shoots, while some are able to sprout epicormic shoots from the trunk. The result now is a woodland of mostly completely dead standing trees, with a mass of new growth low down: only a few have living branches in their crowns.

Among the Eucalyptus are a mass of other regenerating woody plants, including wattles (especially Acacia obliqua), several olearias, Leptospermum, Grevillea and more, and from the tangle of dead stems it was easy to see how they would soon form an almost impenetrable thicket. But their suppression means that other plants have a chance, and we saw a great diversity of smaller species in flower. The highlight was finding the rare and seldom-seen Dampiera fusca in full flower, en masse, a really beautiful sight, but several ground orchids, other monocots, numerous legumes and many more (most of which I'd never heard of), made it a splendid day of field botany.

Regeneration of Eucalyptus following a fire three years ago.

Forget David Nash! Charred eucalypt trunks are beautifully sculptural.

A particularly strongly-coloured flush of new growth from an unidentified Eucalyptus: they regenerate freely but the characteristics of bark and fruit can't be seen to give an accurate identification.

A seedling Acacia obliqua among lush Polytrichum.

A sun orchid, possibly Thelymitra simulata

The star plant of the day: Dampiera fusca

Massed flowering of Dampiera fusca is extremely rare: this is three years after a fire and follows a wet winter.

My host and guide for today, Roger Farrow, photographing Dampiera. As he said we hit the jackpot, with very few people ever having seen this species, never mind sheets of it.

Viola betonicifolia in the litter below the eucalypts.

Daviesia ulicifolia was abundant

Hakea microcarpa in a swamp, with needle-sharp leaves.

Utricularia dichotoma was a nice plant to find in the swamp.

Back at the ranch... a rather friendly King Parrot.