City Botanic Gardens

It took a building evacaution a fortnight ago, with a Botanic Garden building assembly point, to remind me that it had been a while since my last visit to Brisbane's City Botanic Gardens - silly really when my office is only about four blocks away. So, last week, I headed back with camera in hand to see what is in bloom in early Autumn.

Brisbane is lucky enough to have two botanic gardens: the original is in the city beside the river, and, in the 70s, the Mount Coot-tha botanic gardens were established at Toowong, an inner Western suburb, after the river broke its banks in the infamous 1974 floods.

The garden provides a tranquil oasis for city workers and students from the adjoining Queensland University of Technology.

One shrub, widely planted throughout the garden that was in full flower was the Brazilian Red Cloak Megaskepasma erythrochlamys here with Spathiphyllum in the foreground.

Although a different colour, the flower of the the Golden Candle plant Pachystachys lutea is similar to that of the Red Cloak. In both cases, the white flower appears in closely arranged coloured bracts. 

Spectacular buttress roots of a Moreton Bay Fig, native to the East Coast of Australia.

Pink mussaenda behind a bed of the striking foliage of calathea.

The Australian White Ibis - photogenic but a bit of a pest in Brisbane 

The stunning Bismarck Palm

My presence was making this young swamphen chick nervous

Hot-footing it across the lily pads to escape

Adult Purple Swamphen

Swamphen family with even younger chick

Scarlet cannas

More Brazilian Red Cloak

An ibis and swamphen on the rocks in front of a bank of Philodendron

If you look closely, you can see that the rock on the right is inhabited.

Here is lizard-in-residence, a handsome Eastern Water Dragon.  I had a close encounter with one of his brothers in my previous post about the Gardens here

Another fancied a branch as his vantage point.

Tree fern frond

Brugmansia in flower, with I think the Caricature Plant Graptophylum pictum  the mauve-toned shrub in the foreground

A tall Ixora

Yellow ixora

Cordyline flower

Another cordyline with both flowers and berry-like fruit

Old Parliament House at the end of the garden and start of the University.

Pentas and bromeliad

This mauve flowered largerstoemia or crepe myrtle had just abut finished blooming.

Selection of bromeliads

Pentas, gaura, bromeliads.

These beds were growing a kind of legume as green fertilizer.

One of the showiest of the autumn blooms in Brisbane, the Tibouchina.

As in my own garden, the daylilies are just finishing off.

Hope you enjoyed your visit. I definitely won't leave it so long before I head back again.