banksia

I believe this was taken in Castlecrag, looking toward The Spit, with Northbridge on the right and Seaforth on the left. The whole area is built out and full of large trees. Unless you can convince the owner of one of the $6M houses there to let you take a photo from their balcony, it seems you won't be able to retake this photo. You can get a similar viewpoint from water level by going to Sailor's Bay park and walking down to the marina. Approximate shooting location: maps.google.com.au/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=...

Lovely place :-)

es interesante

Typically, a multi-stemmed shrub to 3 m tall, bearing a lignotuber. It grows mostly north of Sydney on the central and north coast subdivisions, extending onto the central and northern tablelands. It is widespread in heath and dry sclerophyll forest and woodland, usually on sandy soils and sandstone outcrops but may also occur on other soil types. The leaves are alternate, linear to oblanceolate, to 10 cm long and only 1 cm wide, green to dark green in colour and are toothed uniformly for most of their length. The lower surface is paler and hairy. The inflorescences of banksias are generally referred to as spikes or a spike-like structure that consists of fused racemes of paired flowers (hence it gets referred to as a conflorescence). There can be 100s of flowers in each spike. The flowers of banksias have 4 tepals (petals or sepals) in a tubular formation, 4 anthers hidden inside, and an elongated carpel (female part) where the style and extends outwards forming the edge of the spike (somewhat similar to individual grevillea and hakea flowers). In this species, the spikes are generally 15 cm long (sometimes longer) and about 6 cm wide, with each flower thin but up to 3 cm long, orange to yellow-orange in colour. The styles (female part of the flower) can be a vivid dark red to purple-black and hooked at the apex (very similar to B. spinulosa). The spike then turns into a cone-like structure of follicles; a fruit that splits open on one side. Each follicle has one or two-winged seeds which is actually a fruit in itself called a samara. The follicles can take a long time to mature and open, usually needing a fire. Each “cone” can produce a fair amount of seed with this species having up to 100 follicles per “cone”, each up to 25 mm long. Source: resources.austplants.com.au/plant/banksia-collina/

ESTELLE THOMSON "The little lady of the flowers." Source: trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/182842542# The Week, 27 May 1931

Uncover the life of Ellis Rowan Artist and naturalist Marian Ellis Ryan was born in the Port Philip District (now Victoria) on 30 July 1848. She was the eldest child of Charles and Marian Ryan, and was always known by her middle name. Her maternal grandfather was natural history illustrator John Cotton, whose sketchbooks she inherited and are now part of the National Library’s collection. Art and nature were the driving forces in Rowan’s life. She did not formally study natural history, and it is not known how much art tuition she received. Rowan developed an individual style and crafted paintings that celebrated the beauty of her subjects while also demonstrating sophisticated painting skills. An early journal held by the Library includes sketches, notes, and transcriptions of poems, as well as dried plants. It offers insight into Rowan as a young woman, revealing her interest in art, plants, and writing. She first exhibited her work at the Intercolonial Exhibition in Melbourne in 1872, winning a bronze medal. Her interests were supported by her family and her husband, Frederic Charles Rowan, whom she married in 1873. This support was significant, given the professional limitations Victorian-era women experienced. Her father’s purchase of land near Mount Macedon, Victoria, in 1872 is believed to have contributed to her passion for Australian wildflowers. Time spent living in New Zealand shortly after her marriage also contributed to her decision to paint professionally, as she did not take to domestic life, discussing this period decades later in 1912: ‘I was suddenly cut off from all social pleasures … and here, for the first time, I was thrown entirely on my own resources … here for the first time I commenced … getting as good a collection of Australasian flora as I could.’ Although Rowan is best known for her paintings of Australian wildflowers, she also admired birds and other life forms. This included butterflies and other insects, which often appear in her watercolor paintings. She preferred to work en plein air, which often involved hiking to remote areas where wildflowers grew, wearing the long, delicate dresses sported by fashionable women of the time. Gifted in composing images, Rowan’s work became bolder over the years as her confidence grew. Her paintings, as Patricia Fullerton has observed, also show an awareness of pattern and decorative expression—something promoted by the popular Aesthetic Movement which celebrated the notion of ‘art for art’s sake. Source: www.nla.gov.au/whats/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/birds-p...