the island of really strange plants

 

On two occasions flying between Australia and America I've passed in daylight over a long bright-green ridge that rises out of the ocean like a single rigid wave. 

It's New Caledonia, and it's important to biologists because it's a small fragment of the same ancient supercontinent, Gondwana, that formed Australia, New Zealand, and New Guinea.  As a tiny heir to this vast fortune, it has an immense number of endemic species -- species found there and nowhere else in the world -- including 74% of its plants.  Since it's a Gondwanan flora, most of its species have relatives in Australia, but are intriguingly different from them.

For biologists like my Australian bushwalking partner Phil Gleeson, New Caledonia is a mandatory pilgrimage.  He's there now, and has started a blog on his travels.  His prose is scientifically precise but fluid and relaxing, and there's enough detail on his adventures as a traveler to hold the general reader's attention.  His photos, such as the Blechnum fern above, are magnificent.  Fiction writers in the audience will appreciate the gradual emergence of his SLR camera as a character in itself.

I'll be joining him there for a week in late September.  At the moment, I'm in Auckland and have two large consulting projects in the front of my brain.  Squished in behind them, i'm pretty sure, is another post on Vancouver.  Stand by, but continue to breathe.

Comments

[dale]

Whoa! A pubic hair plant. (Sorry, but to me the association is inescapable :->)

[Philip Gleeson]

Well, at the risk of appearing terribly anal, here's a polite correction. Dracophyllum is a genus of weird spiky plants in the Gondwanand subfamily Styphelioideae of the Ericaceae (formerly classed as the family Epacridaceae). The plant in the picture is an uncurling new frond of a species of Blechnum, which I wasn't able to identify. I might have thrown you by referring to the bizarre form of a Dracophyllum. The Blechnum ferns weren't particularly bizarre, only if you take to their new fronds with an artistic eye.

The image that the frond brought to my mind from that angle was the ribs of a boat, like looking into the prow of a Viking ship. I guess I'm just not as sex-obsessed as I thought I was.

[Teresa Gilman]

Well, I thought it looked like wings. Or a piece of jewelry. Lovely whatever it looks like.

And your partner's blog about the SLR... Very interesting.

Teresa

[Jarrett]

For the record, I've corrected the error to which Phil refers above.

[brittney]

why is that plant called