Xanthoria australis
After fire the grass tree (Xanthoria australis) flowers in a spectacular and prolific manner. This particular one had a flower stem about 3m in height. It was not only this that attracted me to this particular specimen but the smaller ‘dolphin’ shaped flower near the crown. Whilst the light this particular morning might have sucked for landscape photography it provided other opportunities. For more information and images involving native Australian vegetation’s adaptation to living with and depending upon fire check out a post Cain Doherty has recently added to his blog from a visit to the Kinglake NP area post ‘black Saturday’.
‘ Xanthoria australis – Canon 5D2. ’
Tony Middleton - Inspired Landscape Photography 
Excellent image–the dolphin shape really jumps out.
cheers for stopping by slamdunk – much appreciated !
awesome man!
fantastic shot here- to be honest I didn’t even notice the dolphin! was drawn to the strong lines, then read your story and had to look again haha.
great work
hey Stephen,
Glad you like it mate, I shoot stuff other than landscapes so it’s good to get some feedback when I do post something like this.
cheers,
tone
cool find Tony – I found another at Wilsons Prom that had bent its flower right around to form a huge question mark. while the odd things you can find aren’t suitable for serious landscape photography, they can make for interesting discussion instead. and when the light sucks, i look a bit harder for these things too. as stephen says – the grass’ lines are very powerful here
hi Cain,
Very true – nature produces the best stuff and sometimes we just need to open our eyes a bit more than what we had set out to achieve.
cheers,
tone 🙂