The Surf Coast has front row seats for Wattle Day on 1 September with 21 species, and most are in flower. Top spot has to go to Golden Wattle, Acacia pycnantha, our national emblem, with its massed clusters of golden orbs, contrasting beautifully with long dark green phyllodes or leaves.
Golden Wattle
Unfortunately, it grows here like a weed. My Varnish Wattle, Acacia verniciflua, had multitudinous buds, which for months looked like pairs of staring eyes; they now have crowded branchlets of similar flower heads of a more muted yellow. The narrow tapering phyllodes may be sticky with resin.
Blackwood, Acacia melanoxylon, our tallest wattle, has paler, less obvious short clusters of globular flower heads.
Blackwood Wattle
Very obvious too are the male plants of Small-leaved Clematis, Clematis microphylla, with their starry cream flowers of four spreading petals and short yellow stamens, ready ‘to pounce’ on the later developing females’ modest drooping flowers.
Small-leaved Clematis male
Elllinor Campbell