Acacia blooms

Springtime in Australia means the acacia are blooming!  The vibrant yellow blossoms are really quite the sight to behold.  Depending on how the light hits them, they appear anywhere from golden to neon lemon.  We took a walk yesterday along the railroad embankment, lined with beautiful blooming acacia.  We're scheduled for a week of rain, but if it's sunny I'll be sure to take a trip over there for some photos.  The brilliant flowers under an azure sky would be so very striking.

Unfortunately, as usual, I'm not sure what kind of acacia we most commonly see around here.  They look a bit like Acacia baileyana (or Cootamundra wattle), but it's hard to tell.  In writing this blog post (and looking at different kinds of acacia on wikipedia) I learned that Acacia pycnantha (or Golden Wattle) is the official Floral Emblem of Australia.  I'm not even sure if we've seen any of those: in my collection of photographs I can identify at least three different kinds of acacia trees, but none have leaves that look like the Golden Wattle.  (I think the pictures on this post are all the same--the photos of the Cootamundra wattle (if that's what they are) just happened to turn out the best.)

 

 

Also, and this is not related to acacia or wattles or Australia at all, but in writing this blog post we came across wikipedia's List of Famous Trees, and from there were directed to a particular tree in Athens, Georgia.  It is, supposedly, the Tree That Owns Itself.  The premise sounds like a novel or a movie.  We also read about Pando, the clonal colony of a single male quaking aspen,  which I have heard about, but forgot a bit how amazing it is.  To think those trees have been there in some shape or form for (at least) 80,000 years is ... pretty phenomenal.