The Victorian naturalist . he golden masses of this wattle, inter-spersed with the white trunks of YellowGums and the black, deeply-furrowedtrunks of Ironbark, blend their colourson a grand scale which no artist butNature could achieve. The show-piece of the Whipstickhowever, is the Hakea Wattle whichoccurs in two forms. At the southernend of the Whipstick the keen observermay find small trees of this species,A. hakeoides. The phyllodes are somethree-eighths of an inch wide and up tofour inches long, while the blossomsare borne in small bunches, often aslong as the phyllodes. This speciescould
The Victorian naturalist . he golden masses of this wattle, inter-spersed with the white trunks of YellowGums and the black, deeply-furrowedtrunks of Ironbark, blend their colourson a grand scale which no artist butNature could achieve. The show-piece of the Whipstickhowever, is the Hakea Wattle whichoccurs in two forms. At the southernend of the Whipstick the keen observermay find small trees of this species,A. hakeoides. The phyllodes are somethree-eighths of an inch wide and up tofour inches long, while the blossomsare borne in small bunches, often aslong as the phyllodes. This speciescould be confused with some forms ofGolden Wattle, but the pods of HakeaWattle are easily distinguished fromthose of the former. The tree-like is rare in the Whipstick. Most abundant and widespread ofall Whipstick acacias is the WhirrakeeWattle (A. hakeoides var angustifolia).It occurs as a rather dense shrub, fre-quently over ten feet high. The phyl-lodes may measure three inches orlonger, but are seldom wider than. three-sixteenths of an inch. The flowersare borne in bunches which are shor-ter than the phyllodes. The HakeaWattle blooms during August and Sep-tember, and from mid-August to mid-September is the time to see thiswattle at its best. A drive through anytrack in the Whipstick then is one ofnever ending beauty. Excellent view-points are along the Tennyson Roadbetween Huntly and Kamarooka, andthe Neilborough Road between Simp-sons Road, Eaglehawk, and Neil-borough. At North Huntly are severallarge paddocks known as the HakeaPaddocks. Here, the Whirrakee Wattlesfree from the competition of othervegetation have grown into huge dome-shaped shrubs with foliage sweepingthe ground. Some measure over twelvefeet across and six to eight feet high,presenting a magnificent spectaclewhen in bloom. Towards the end of August whenthe Hakea, Whirrakee and GoldenWattles are blooming, the Whipstickglows with embers of living gold. A yellow-flowered dwarf wattle mostprevalent in t
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdec, booksubjectnaturalhistory, bookyear1884
