THE BUSH in our rural districts is richly adorned with wild flowers in bloom in October and November. Even cleared land growing Eucalyptus nitens for wood chips rapidly recovers once the trees have been removed.

The native bush on Cox’s Road was cleared in the 1980s, and sprayed with the dangerous herbicide Atrazine to kill off the bracken fern. Even this treatment was no deterrent to the resurgent flowering shrubs and plants. Members of the Fabaceae family – that is, pod bearing plants – seem to predominate. The yellow flowering Pultenaea juniperina proliferates on the edges of tracks. The common name of Prickly Beauty is apt, as anyone who has stepped out of the car into one well knows.

Oxylobium ellipticum (Golden Shaggypea), pictured above, grows in hedge-like rows along the banks. Another yellow bush plant which spreads along the ground is Hibbertia procumbens (Spreading Guineaflower).

The white flowering shrub Olearia lirata (Forest Daisybush) grows to 5m and is just now adorning the edges of the forests in our district.

The delightful scent of Leptomeria drupacea (Erect Currantbush) is noticeable from many metres distance, but is quite an insignificant plant which proliferates along hilly pathways at Birralee and on Cox’s Road.

Unfortunately this is the only one of these native plants which is impossible to propagate, according to Sally at Habitat Plants, Liffey.

Vegetables

It would be easier to list the vegies which cannot be sown in November.

Tomato plants are on sale in their hundreds in local shops. However it would be wise to keep these under cover until late November.

It would not be the first time that frost tender plants have been wiped out by a late frost in Novembe