One of the scarcest plants in the Ballarat district is the small-flowered grevillea, now reduced to perhaps a single plant near Creswick.
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Known to botanists as Grevillea micrantha, the small-flowered grevillea is one of five very similar species in Victoria. It is one of the smallest of its group, growing to only around 30 centimetres high. It is a plant of western Victoria, sparsely recorded from an area bounded by Portland, The Grampians, Wedderburn and the Brisbane Ranges.
The Creswick site had at least three small plants in winter this year, but two have since gone - perhaps nibbled by wallabies. The one pictured was photographed in flower earlier this month.
Its slender white flowers probably indicate that it is pollinated by insects rather than birds. The small-flowered grevillea is a root-suckering plant, so, hopefully, the nibbled-down plants will sprout again to grow and flower.
About 80 plants were present 25 years ago, so the reduction in numbers is very concerning. The decline has been gradual, rather than sudden, and there has been no known human disturbance in that period.
Its current statewide listing as rare and critically endangered is certainly appropriate for the Ballarat district. It is rare in the Grampians. The last-known local plant is currently threatened by proposed track-widening for mountain bikes in the Creswick Regional Park.
LOCAL LARKS
There are five lark-like birds on the local list, all of them rather similar in appearance. The Australasian pipit is the most numerous of these, with the common skylark - a European bird - also common.
Less numerous, but found in small numbers in summer, is Horsfield's bushlark, the smallest and shortest-tailed of the five similar birds. It has a rufous tinge in its wings, as well as a thick, almost finch-like beak.
The skylark is larger than the bushlark and the pipit. It has a short crest. The mid-sized pipit is best identified by its slender bill and its tail-dipping habit.
While not closely-related, the brown songlark and the rufous songlark share many similarities with the earlier three. The male brown songlark is a large bird, almost blackbird-sized. His chest is darker than his back. The female is smaller and more like the other larks, but she has noticeably strong legs and a dark belly.
The rufous songlark is also a streaked brown bird. It prefers lightly timbered places, rather than open pasture or cropping country.
With the exception of the pipit, all of these birds are quite vocal, although it can be difficult to distinguish the songs of some of them.
NATURE QUERIES ANSWERED
We have always called this plant the chocolate flower, but we have been told that it is a lily. What is its correct name? Whatever its name, we like its chocolate perfume. I.T., Yendon.
The proper name for this is chocolate lily, one of many small native lilies. To botanists, it is Arthropodium strictum. Not everyone likens its perfume to chocolate, with some people claiming a caramel or vanilla smell.
The chocolate lily is common in grassy forested country throughout the Ballarat district, where it can be abundant in wetter years. A tuberous plant, it dies back in summer and re-shoots in autumn. Its branching stems help to identify it.
North of the Divide is a similar, unbranched, slightly paler species, known as the nodding chocolate lily, while in damper forests south of Ballarat is the pale vanilla-lily, with numerous small pale flowers hanging from its arching stems.