Beauty every which way

Winter is here, with a polar blast hitting the country - not too much of an exaggeration as the wind has an unobstructed path to us from Antarctica.  After the wind and cold there is sunshine, a crisp clear day.

The big waves have settled, but the water is still very active.  Looking across Island Bay, past the island Taputeranga, are the snowy hillsides of the Orongorongos.  When I stopped briefly to get this photo I was warmed by the delight of some young tourists who had also stopped their car to enjoy the sight.  One was wielding an iPad to capture some images.  "This way," pointed one of the friends.  "Hey this way too," said another looking in the other direction to the South Island with its snowy mountains.

And that, I think, aptly conveys the possible delights of life here on earth - even if there are no snowy vistas there can be beauty wherever we look, if we bother to stop and see.

Autumn colours and textures

A flash of colour in the relative shelter of Happy Valley, by Owhiro Bay -     a liquidambar tree flaming in bright contrast with the trees and shrubs nearby.

Behind it are the upright bare branches of a line of poplar trees and behind them, down beside the stream are some willows - you can just see the soft gold of the willow leaves which have not yet fallen. 

Up the hillside beyond is the bright green of various shrubs with a golden gorse flower embellishment. 

At the front right there is a small coprosma with the typical divaricating tangle found in many New Zealand native shrubs.

The lovely warmth of the colours and textures stopped me in my tracks, to bask a bit in the pleasure of it, knowing that soon it will be winter and warmth will be more likely found indoors.

Batty or catty? The flowers of Tacca chantrieri

A striking sight in the Begonia House at Wellington Botanic Garden.  Not a begonia! 

The black bat plant, also known as cat's whiskers or devil flower.   

Black (or dark purple) is an unusual colour for flowers, and the flowers of this plant have a most unusual appearance. 

The bat-like wings are bracts and the long whiskery growths are filiform bracteoles - modified leaves.  They frame an umbel (cluster) of flowers - the lower ones have opened and are fading, the middle ones are wide open and above them is an array of buds that are yet to open.

The long leaves are a lush glossy deep green, but are not visible in the image. 

A closer view of the flowers and bracts, demonstrating the difficulty of photographing very black flowers...

This is a large perennial plant from South east Asia and it is found in the understorey of tropical rainforests.   It is quite popular as an ornamental plant but in the wild it is endangered because of habitat destruction.

The plant produces taccalonolides and these are being investigated because they show promising anti-cancer properties - microtubule activity which kills certain cancer cells but not healthy ones - similar to Taxol, a very important anti-cancer treatment  found in the yew tree.

So - losing this plant could have meant losing a promising cancer treatment.  How careless we can be with the treasures around us!

Cloudy stripes - indoors version? Zygopetalum flowers

To my eyes their patterns echo the rather clumpy stripes of the altocumulus undulatus clouds.  Otherwise they are a sight as different as can be - flowers of an orchid, Zygopetalum "Titanic" - or that was the cultivar name my plant was given when I got it fifteen years ago - but the accuracy of horticultural naming can be very erratic. 

The flowering spikes, longer than the leaves, have about six flowers cascading down. The colours of the flowers - dark maroon blotches on the green sepals and the big white lip with purple stripes and speckles - make them an arresting sight.  They have a lovely scent and last well. 

My plant seems to flower mostly in late autumn - apparently they are meant to flower in winter or spring.  But given that Zygopetalum come from humid forests in South America, and mine has lived in a rather cool and dry room, albeit with good morning light, it isn't too surprising that it doesn't necessarily conform to expectations.  Bold and nonconformist, it is delightfully reliable and uncomplaining and a source of great pleasure!

Stripes - altocumulus undulatus for the cloud-savvy

Hope I've got the cloud-naming correct - with the help of the Cloud Collector's Handbook (see parhelion post) and the good old internets.  A striking sight yesterday in the late afternoon...

They seem to arise in unsettled weather - harbingers of further rain - and appeared after a day of showers and sun, but rather muted autumnal sunlight.  "Altocumulus" refers to their altitude (mid-level) and that they are layers or patches of cloudlets, and "undulatus" describes the wave-shaped pattern.

Closer up, the stripey shadows on the hills of the Orongorongos.  The hills are still quite brown after the long dry, but there is some green appearing and the clouds suggest that there will be more rain to assist the grass.

After the rain - the greening begins

I had hoped that the Owhiro Bay hillside with the worst fire damage would be recovering with the rain over the last month.  But no such luck.  And there was also evidence of some erosion - since there isn't much topsoil above the sandstone base that is a great pity.  However near the macrocarpa tree which was by another badly burned area, there were signs of new life...

Closer up, the devastation's mostly monochromatic textures, jazzed up by the green of some grasses and a few recovering shrubs. 

I was being pretty unrealistic and impatient in my hope that real recovery would have appeared already.  It does look as though the gorse burned up most completely and it will be interesting to see which plants come through as the winter progresses. But I am pretty confident that spring will bring an amazing sight, a silver lining as it were - but it won't be silver.  (There is a daisy which I have mentioned on the blog previously - watch this space!)

Fire damage - before the rain

I wrote about the fire at Owhiro Bay back in February.  Two months later, there had been almost no rain, and the blackened scrub was stark against the dry soil. 

Looking across to the hills, the distant green of native shrubs and gorse plants contrasted with the blackened areas consumed by the fire.  A stand of pine trees showed almost no damage but in the foreground there was a large macrocarpa which had been badly injured and a blackened stump had fallen beside it.  There was a contrasting pattern made by the fire-delivered plant death - skeletal black branches and soft bleached shrubby mounds.  These photos were taken on an atmospheric grey day with clouds which did not deliver, and seagulls circling in the sky providing a rather sinister presence.

Closer up a lone tree on a ridge, probably a native Pseudopanax, provided a glimpse of green among the charred branches.  Gorse seemed to have been thoroughly consumed by the fire, and I wondered whether it fuelled the fire more than the native plants did, but what I saw did not enlighten me. 

Since I took these photos a month ago there has been rain, decent rain.  I intended to go back today but didn't have the opportunity - so tomorrow I hope to see what difference this rainy month has made.

Beached - but still holding fast

A southerly storm and its wild waves subsided two days ago.  But evidence of the disturbance was still to be seen today on the beach at Lyall Bay, including many seaweeds looking curiously like a horde of beached creatures.  The small (compared to the piles of kelp) seaweeds were still holding fast to the rocks that had secured them in the deep until the turbulence had wrenched them and washed them up.

Many of them were a gorgeous red.  Closer up, you can see the soft corrugations of the red blades,

or the texure of papillae on some contrasting with the texture of the sand.

Green and brown seaweeds had also suffered this upheaval.

This brown seaweed has beautifully ridged blades, and you can see its branched holdfast holding on tight to the stone which was its secure anchor until the storm.  On the stone there is a pinkness which could be a crusting red alga.  I await correction! 

A holdfast, as the name suggests, is a structure which holds on tight - but although it looks a bit like the roots of a plant it does not take up nutrients, just sticks incredibly tightly to the surface on which it anchors.  Impressive - the holding fast and the power of the waves.

Soft sunset calm - before the storm - at Te Raekaihau Point

It is autumn, but southerly storms bring "instant winter" to Wellington at any time of year and with them there is a big drop in temperature.  But the compensation for the cold is the drama of the clouds and waves, and the contrast of storm times with the in-between times.  At Te Raekaihau Point, at sunset at the end of an unseasonably warm and gentle day, a southerly front was approaching - the clouds a soft pink, the sea still calm and baby blue...

Two people walking on the rocky outcrops were dwarfed by the scale of sea and sky.  The calm mood of the pretty scene was somewhat disturbed by the sight of rain falling from the approaching clouds, the beginning of a southerly storm front. 

Awareness of weather is very much part of living on the south coast for me.  The fluctuations we experience are a profound reminder of how vulnerable we living things are to changes in the movement of wind and water, and that reminds me of climate change and the challenges we all face on this precious earth. 

Dreamy autumnal maple

With stormy weather raging outside I have been enjoying an image from yesterday - a Japanese maple in the Wellington Botanic garden which is usually covered with crimson leaves at this time of year.  Maybe it is the warmer temperatures we have had, maybe the effect of the drought - but only some of the leaves have changed.  With the wind here we never have a "perfect" autumn display anyway - the leaves are usually quite tatty and weathered, ready to fall, which they no doubt will be doing now.

I love the pretty contrast of soft greens and rich crimson, with dappled backlighting angling through the branches - a dreamy look emphasised by a soft focus effect. 

Today is so very different, any softness in the light being due to the dense rain and/or sea spray, depending on proximity to the coast.  In the north there has been torrential rain, in the south there was snow, and here in the middle we have had dense rainstorms, thunder and lightning, gale force southerlies, flooding in the city - generally miserable.  And stormy seas never look as impressive as you might expect in still images, and when I tried to capture an image or two my lens was spattered with salty spray in seconds.  So I turned to the calming beauty of yesterday, anticipating the settling of the storm as its energy dissipates.