Blue Mountains Holiday Trip Part 2

Blue Mountains Holiday Trip Part 2

Today our goals were the stone pagodas of Garden of Stones and Wollemi National Parks as well as Mount Tomah Botanic Gardens.

The landscape of the sandstone-ironstone pagodas. This picture is taken from atop one of them. I had been looking forward to showing this area to my family.

One of the plants in flower on the way there was Goodenia bellidifolia (Goodeniaceae).

The only downside of getting there is that you have to pass through Newnes State "Forest". Forest as in clear-felling, apparently.

We then returned to Lithgow and drove eastwards from there to Mount Tomah. Shortly before reaching the gardens I noticed Calomeria amaranthoides (Asteraceae) on the roadside. Yes, Asteraceae; it is certainly one of the weirder representatives of this family on a continent that has its fair share of morphologically aberrant daisies.

The above is the view over Mount Tomah Botanic Gardens, with the Blue Mountains in the distance.

My daughter was particularly enchanted by the bog garden, as it had a lot of carnivorous plants on display. Here a detail of a sun-dew (Drosera).

She also liked the remnant rainforest. Here a Microsorum fern is climbing up a trunk.