The Bottle Of Trafalgar

Time For The Big Brush-Off

Photographs copyright: DAVID McMAHON

The start of spring (yes, it's the first month of spring Down Under) coincides with the flowering of several varieties of wattle and, of course, the plant I've photographed here as well.

It's called a bottlebrush. Why? Because its blooms look exactly like the sort of brush that is used to scrub the inside of a bottle.

It's a variety of acacia (can someone can tell me exactly what the botanical name is?) and the scarlet bottlebrush that I've photographed here is the most common variety. The first picture is front-on, so you can see the myriad dots that look like LEDs (light-emitting diodes), one on the end of each individual spike. The second picture is more side-on and both shots show you the fresh green foliage that surrounds each bloom.