#gastrolobium

[drhoz]

#3332 - Gastrolobium microcarpum - Sandplain Poison

A Poison Pea now found only in the Dryandra Woodlands National Park and nearby patchs of surviving woodland, and some parts of the northern Wheatbelt.

As it happens, these plant is probably responsible for the survival of the critically endangered Numbats in the area, albeit indirectly - it's so poisonous that any mammal trying to eat it, without having evolved over here in WA where poison peas are endemic, is probably going to die. Our local grazers like the brushtail possums can eat it without harm - but introduced predators like foxes and cats that eat the possums will die. An extensive poison bait campaign around the Dryandra Woodlands, using the same Sodium Fluoroacetate, has killed enough feral cats and foxes that the Numbats and other small marsupials are finally recovering.

Dryandra Woodlands NP, WA

[wenbochenphoto]

Gastrolobium sericeum of Western Australia. 

[ruthbancroftgarden]

Gastrolobium celsianum

The common name for Gastrolobium celsianum is “Swan River Pea”, and as the name implies it belongs to the Pea Family (Fabaceae). It is a low-growing shrub which spreads horizontally, and it comes from Western Australia.

-Brian

[drhoz]

#3330 - Gastrolobium villosum - Crinkle-leaved Poison

One of the highly poisonous peas endemic to SW Australia, that somehow extract enough fluorine from our ancient soils to kill.

Grows in gravelly clay or loam, laterite, granite, mostly along the Darling Escarpment. Probably the granite outcrops studding the escarpment like the plums in a pudding provide the fluorine.

Eucalyptus woodland nr. Sullivan Rock

[drhoz]

#3504 - Gastrolobium spinosum - Prickly Poison

The spines are the only warning you'll get before you make the fatal mistake of eating it.

Widespread across the SW corner.

Foxes Lair, Narrogin

[drhoz]

#3331 - Gastrolobium capitatum - Bacon and Eggs

A spindly shrub growing about 1m high, and most common on the Swan Coastal Plain.

Hammond Park, Perth.

[drhoz]

#3233 - Gastrolobium wonganense - Wongan Poison Pea

The Wongan Hills area has a fantastically rich plant diversity, and a lot of that is down to the harsh climate combined with complex geology - Archaean rocks of the Yilgarn Craton, mainly granite and gneisses with some altered volcanics and sediments forming greenschists, converted into laterites over the last 3 billion years, and the lower-lying areas overlain with windblown sand of various colours and ages. This complex patchwork was then massively deforested for agriculture.

So if you're a plant species that is already uncommon, and is only found in areas with particular soil properties, you have a problem. In this case, only in clay loam over laterite, in open mallee woodland.

That's why this one is probably one of the rarest plants we managed to identify over the weekend of the BioBlitz - in fact it's quite likely that some of records were a previously unknown population of the species.

GSB2024 Wongan Hills - Mt. O'Brien