Wildflower festival in Kings Park

September is wildflower season in Western Australia, and the 400 ha Kings Park close to our house hosts the Wildflower Festival with guided tours through its botanical gardens and nature walks. Today started sunny so we went out to see what was flowering...

The south west of West Australia is Australia's only Global Biodiversity Hotspot and one of the twelve botanical hotspots in the world. Of the 25,000 plant species in Australia, 12,000 are in Western Australia. Nearly 80% of the plant species in the region are found nowhere else on earth.







Pink and white Everlasting flowers


We took a tour of the botanical garden. Our guide was very knowledgable not only about all the flowers, but also about the many different trees that we have here.

Our tour group under a beautiful peppermint tree

Most flowers in WA need birds rather than bees to transport pollen and germinate. There are some native bees in in Australia but they do not occur in swarms and honey was therefore not known in Australia until European bees were imported.

A bee germinating a Buttercup flower

Not surprisingly, there are also numerous birds in the park, sometimes easier to hear than to spot. We spotted many Red Wattle Birds this time around, who were feasting on the blooming flowers of the Parrot Bushes.

Blooming Parrot Bush flower

Red Wattle Bird

In Kings Park are 60 orchid species. This is more than can be found in the whole of Europe!

Pink Fairy Orchid

There are 76 Banksia species, and all but one occur naturally only in Australia. Banksias were named after Sir Joseph Banks, who, in 1770, was the first European to collect specimens of these plants. South western Australia contains the greatest diversity of banksias, with 60 species recorded.

Banksia

Many flowers have very different shapes and colours than what we are used to see in Europe.

Example of an atypical flower

Impressionist picture