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We are very excited to be joined by Professor Stephen D. Hopper AC as our guest speaker for the November webinar!

Professor Hopper will summarise close to 60 years of visiting the Leeuwin Naturaliste Ridge, and focuses on rare plant surveys conducted in the 1980s when substantial components of the flora were undescribed. For example, of the 50 species of Caladenia (Orchidaceae) now known in the Augusta Margaret River Shire, about half were named by Prof Hopper and colleagues, notably Andrew Brown. Local endemics are a feature of the Ridge. Rare communities include those of inland granite outcrops, each with their own mix of rock outcrop and gnamma (rock pool) species. Also some rare hybrids are known. The fire ephemeral Eremosyne pectinata is from an ancient lineage allied to rainforest shrubs and trees of eastern Australia and South America. Discoveries of new weeds is still occurring. Lastly, a completely fresh perspective on the flora emerges from walking together with Wadandi people, the Webb family in particular.

Did you want a printable poster of this event to display?
No worries! Just email conservation@wildflowersocietywa.org.au and ask for one and we can send it through for you to pass on to others who you think will be interested!

PLEASE READ, IMPORTANT INFO:

This webinar will require you to enter your first and last name, and email address to allow you to join the webinar. This simply allows us to ensure only ticket holding emails can attend due to limited spaces. We recommend allowing yourself five minutes prior to the webinar to register (through the usual webinar link) so you don’t miss out on the start. Thanks for your understanding!

One ticket = One webinar link (needed for one device). The number of tickets you require is based on the number of devices that will be used to join the webinar, not the number of people attending.

I.e. If multiple people will be attending the webinar on the same device (laptop, T.V. screen, computer, phone, etc.) then only one ticket must be reserved.

This webinar will require you to enter your first and last name, and email address to allow you to join the webinar. This simply allows us to ensure only ticket holding emails can attend due to limited spaces. We recommend allowing yourself five minutes prior to the webinar to register (through the usual webinar link) so you don’t miss out on the start. Thanks for your understanding!

A Jewel in the Crown of a Global Biodiversity Hotspot: Yule Brook and the Greater Brixton Street Wetlands

Joint us for our second webinar of the series with guest speaker; Emeritus Professor Hans Lambers from the school of biological sciences of UWA.

Get in fast and reserve your tickets before they sell out! Your confirmation email will have your own private Zoom link to the webinar to click on at the time of the event.

Make sure you are staying up-to-date by liking the WSWA Facebook page and following the webinar event page by clicking on the links below:

Wildflower Society of Western Australia’s Official Facebook Page

Webinar Two Facebook Event

Webinar Summary:

South-western Australia is a global biodiversity hotspot, where the greatest plant species diversity is found on the most severely nutrient-impoverished soils. Three National Parks and Greater Perth harbour the greatest plant species diversity in south-western Australia. Within Greater Perth, the Greater Brixton Street Wetlands are notorious for their enormous plant species richness, and home to numerous plant species that have special conservation value as well as several threatened ecological communities. If we do not mitigate climate change and continue to develop Perth based on out-of-date principles that ignore the sensitive hydrology of our region, many threatened species and ecological communities will be pushed towards extinction. We have a choice, and can prevent at least some of this, but we have to act, and act now.

Guest Speaker David Knowles – Wildflowers, Insects and Fire

David Knowles is the Spineless Wonders Biodiversity Inventory Surveys consultant based in Perth Western Australia.

He has always lived and breathed for the environment and its inhabitants. David has had 44 years of biosurvey experience in Australia, Vietnam, Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and New Guinea. Alongside surveys, he studies, photographs, writes and encourages the appreciation of invertebrates and reptiles to many through school and other presentations and displays. His photographic library contains the largest private collection of WA macroinvertebrate images.

With world insect populations in decline for all sorts of anthropogenic reasons it is time for the few eco-literate members of our society to again stand up to eco-illiterate governments and their bureaucracies in their war of ignorance against the major proportion of our terrestrial macrofauna – the insects (‘bugs’). Some in the northern suburbs may have noticed the extensive burning occurring In the Moore River drainage. In my macro-invertebrate inventory surveys, I tend to target prime adult macroinvertebrate activity times like spring. A significant proportion of insect biodiversity is mature and seeking mates in springtime. DFES could not have targeted a better time to kill as many of our pollinators and leaf litter recyclers as possible!

“I suspect over the spring burning season that multi millions, if not trillions, of breeding animals die as a result. How do we change this extinction culture?”

Alex George Presentation

Join us for the return of our much loved Branch Meetings with guest speaker our very own Alex George giving a special presentation on the ‘Plant Collectors of the South West’ from the early French to present day.

 

Eastern Hills Annual Native Plant Sale

Once again we are staging our annual bonanza of a plant sale. This sale offers hundreds of local plants grown by local enthusiasts who will be on hand to offer lots of advice. There are plants suited to a range of soil types.  All plants are subject to rigid quality control, so they have well developed roots and will thrive in your garden. Ranging from $2.50  to $6 they are a very economical way to start or develop your native garden. And it’s a perfect time to plant.

Chittering Wildflower Show

A Three Day Celebration of our beautiful West Australian Springtime of Colour.  Chittering Landcare Centre (175 Old Gingin Rd off Great Northern Hwy just north of the Brand Hwy lights) has a display of named wildflower specimens.  Assistance with identification of wildflowers is available, copies of the book “Wildflowers of Chittering and surrounds” and native plants will be available to purchase.   Refreshments, weed identification and landcare advice each day and Saturday is family day with extra attractions for children.

 

The town of Bindoon celebrates with its annual Spring Flower Festival with its gardens out in colour and other festival activities.  There is the Bindoon Tale Trail for those wishing to take a stroll through the history of Bindoon and Chittering; Quilts in Spring and Bindoon Museum, both located in the historical Brockman Centre, 6 kilometres south of the town; and other activities within walking distance of Bindoon Hall include Art and Photography Exhibition and Sales, Historical Vehicle Day, Bindoon Op Shop, Plantation Wildflowers and Market Stalls.

 

Filled with hope and possibilities: The Art of Vanessa Liebenberg

On 2 February 2017 local artist Vanessa Liebenberg will speak at the first gathering of the Murdoch Branch for the year.

Flora plays a major role in Vanessa’s work as an artist and textile designer. Since moving to Western Australia, she has been fascinated by the plant life and wildflowers of WA. Vanessa will discuss some of these influences and the influences of botanical artists on her work, as well as the process and media she uses.

Vanessa spoke recently with Viki Cramer about her art.

New Season. Pyrography on wood.

It all begins with burning the wood. Vanessa Liebenberg loves this phase of developing a new work. “I love wood, the feel of it, the ‘organic-ness’ of it, and when I’m burning into it it’s just got a beautiful look. I find the whole process really meditative. I can do that for hours.”

She works on specially made panels of wood veneer onto which she first makes a detailed drawing, burning out the wood with a pyrography pen.

Her works are then built up, layer upon layer, much like the native bushland that is home to the wildflowers and birds that tangle and flit through her paintings in a cycle of birth, death, rebirth and new beginnings.

“I’m originally a textile designer so I think that’s a big influence because textiles can be quite layered and, especially because I was a woven textile designer, I also did the construction of the fabric as well as the design.”

What lies beneath. Mixed media on wood canvas.

After burning the wood, Vanessa does separate detailed sketches with a calligraphy pen that are transferred onto silk screen and then screen-printed onto the panel. Then she begins to “pull it all together”, beginning with a layer of a medium that allows her to paint onto the wood.

“It’s a really complicated way of doing it,” she admits with a smile, “as now I have all this detail and then I have to sort of paint in between it with the medium, and then I have to paint it again with what I’m doing next, which is mostly acrylic [paint]. Then when everything is really dry I would do the last layer, which is the oil paint.”

Her technique of layering different media is an important part of how Vanessa creates her artworks. Developing this technique has been a gradual process. “I used to do mostly oil painting, mostly quite traditional detailed flowers and portraits, but then I think I got a little bit bored with that. I missed the textile design part and I wanted to add more layers. I missed drawing. I like all those different ways of creating – drawing, painting, printing – and I was thinking of a way of how to combine it into one piece. So gradually it evolved into that process.”

She likes the unexpectedness of where the process takes her. “I will have an idea in my head, but I won’t have a complete picture,” she says of the initial phase of creating a new work.

Somewhere. Pyrography and mixed media on wood.

Vanessa draws inspiration and comfort from the resilience of nature; in how plants and animals endure and adapt to the changing environment around them with what she regards as quiet and joyful determination.

“You look at nature and it just goes on, it doesn’t matter what happens,” she says. Flowers grow in obscure places under the most difficult conditions. “It makes me think that I sometimes take life a bit too seriously, and then when I see that I feel comforted. I think it’s beautiful and soothing and calming, and filled with hope and possibilities.”

Hope and future possibilities, for humanity and for nature, are recurring themes in Vanessa’s work. Several of her paintings feature children surrounded by a kaleidoscope of flowers and birds. “I often think about children and how they’ve got this world of possibilities in front of them, of what can still happen and what they can achieve,” she says. She muses on that feeling of looking back on your own life, especially as you get older, and remembering just how exciting the world was when you were young, when you believed anything could happen.

Possibilities. Pyrography and mixed media on wood.

Vanessa has painted and drawn since she was a child, and continued to do so even while working full-time as a textile designer. At times her obsession with painting has felt something of a curse. “It’s not an easy occupation, so sometimes I’ve thought why, why, why do I always feel this need to create something?” She laughs. “Can’t I just be a doctor? Why the struggle?”

The upside of her constant urge to create is that she is never bored. “I have a million things in my head that I want to do, but I just don’t have enough time.”

Since emigrating to Perth from Cape Town in 2007, Vanessa has developed a fascination for kangaroo paws and banksias.

“It doesn’t matter how many times I look at the kangaroo paw or the banksia, I just have this intense desire to draw it or to paint it. I think it’s the amazing form and colours, but mostly the form. I also love the eucalyptus trees, the shape of the leaves and the colours, and the way that they hang.”

The choice of which plants or birds she will incorporate into any particular piece is not a calculated decision. “I see something beautiful and I want to recreate it” she says.

Vanessa provides sound advice to budding botanical artists about how to approach such complex floral forms. “When I paint or draw anything, I don’t look at and see ‘this is a flower that I’m going to draw’, I look at it as shapes and light and dark; as shadows and light. And if you do that and you really look at what you’re seeing – the shadows, the light – you can draw anything.”

“If you practice” she adds.

All artworks are by Vanessa Liebenberg and are reproduced with her permission. You can see more of Vanessa’s art on her website.

Author: Viki Cramer

 

Spectacular Flora of Hyden

Our Dear Member Dr Eddy Wajon has been commissioned to write a colour guide book to the Flora of Hyden. Unlike his series of Colour Guides to the Spring Wildflowers of Western Australia, which covers only those plants flowering predominantly in Spring, the Wildflowers of Hyden will cover what may be found in flower at any time of the year. This has entailed visiting Hyden for 4-7 days every month for the past 15 months, photographing whatever is in flower within a 40 km radius of Hyden. As expected, spring is peak flowering time, but there is always something in flower, with the least in late autumn. Some groups of plants seem to flower in abundance in particular non-spring flowering times, eg Eucalypts, Acacias or Melaleucas.

Eddy will share the stories behind his photos of some of the spectacular, interesting, common and less common wildflowers in flower. His recent camera hunt proves that there still a lot to discover in this under-appreciated eastern section of the Wheatbelt.

The door opens at 7.30 with $3 raffles that can win you something natively interesting! Eddy’s talk will start after the Wildflowers’ “Show & Tell “at ~ 7:45 pm. See who is coming on our Facebook Event Page too.