I need to get caught up on microscopy over here! This is a female Golden Stag Beetle (Lamprima aurata) that I found (deceased) in my yard over summer. I'm pretty obsessed with how these turned out, her colours are absolutely stunning. #inverts #insects #beetles

Was excited to see my photography take center stage on the ABC this weekend! You can read @saltandbrine.bsky.social 's brilliant article on plant pollination here. 🎉🎉 www.abc.net.au/news/science...

Its been a while! March was extremely hectic between working on submitting a manuscript for review, giving talks and general Masters work. Have a photo of some Grevillea pollen from the archives (Grevillea jephcottii, taken in 2022). The centre pollen grain is showing pollen tube growth!

Grevillea barklyana, aka the gully grevillea. Endemic to Victoria and critically endangered (this is from a horticulture plant). When you take a close look you'll notice it has PINK pollen. From my own dissections the pollen starts out as yellow and turns pink as the florets mature and open.

Teaching Fish microscopy (thankful she waited till after I was done using the microscope to rub her face all over it).

And that's a wrap for #VicBioCon26! Thanks to everyone who came to chat, you're all amazing 🫶

Here in the Plants and Pollinators 1 session at #VicBioCon! 🎉 🎉

Tomorrow I'll be presenting at #VicBioCon! I've got a speed talk in Plants and Pollinators 1 (at 11:45am) and have a poster that evening at 5pm. Come say hi and ask me about my Acacias! 😊

Senna artemisioides (Fabaceae)! Unlike typical peas, these have 5 rounded petals of unequal size and a showy display of long brown anthers at their centre. It is a buzz-pollinated plant (it has poricidal anthers), requiring bees to vibrate at a specific frequency to release its pollen.

#Cryptandra tomentosa! This plant is in the #Rhamnaceae family, with its genus name referring to its anthers being hidden by hood-shaped petals. Unfortunetly, the specimen I had to photograph weren’t very fresh so this is a species I’ll need to come back to in the future.

Starting off the new year with #Asterolasia trymalioides subsp. trymalioidea (Rutaceae), aka the alpine star-bush! An alpine plant found in NSW and Vic, its five-petaled flowers look like little yellow stars, and the fine petals shimmer under light (really hard to capture via photos!).

#Citrus australiasica, aka the #fingerlime! These flowers are off a cultivar I’ve been growing for several years now. They’re lovely plants if you don’t mind having a living pincushion in your garden (they are absolutely covered in spines).

Leucopogon virgatus var. brevifolous (Ericaceae)! This pecies is endangered in Victoria and ocurrs in a relatively small range of heathland in the west of the state (it occurs outside the state, too!). It’s a small shrub to 50cm and has tiny flowers (4-10mm long) with densly hairy petals.

#Pandorea pandorana, aka wonga vine! This climbing plantncan get over 6m high. It has gorgeous tubular flowers that are white-creamy on the outside and a deep burgundy-purple on the inside. The anthers are pressed up against the top of the floral tube, almost cris-crossing over the style.

#Daucus glochidiatus, aka Australian carrot! This is a plant in the family #Apiaceae and can be anywhere from 3-60cm tall. Its flowers are impossibly tiny, only about 1.5mm in diameter with minute purple petals (which made it difficult to photograph, even with a microscope!).

This weeks features #Dimorphotheca ecklonis (Asteraceae)! This is a species of #daisy from South Africa that’s commonly grown in gardens here. Their ligules (what appear as petals) can be white to purple, while the centre disc florets are a deep blue/purple. They’re quite striking flowers up close!

Excited to share that I'm one of the lucky photographers to get one of my photos published in Ecology Matters by @ecolsocaus.bsky.social! It's incredibly surreal seeing something you made printed in a book. You can spot Manuka buds on page 12! ❤️

#Styphelia ericoides (Ericaceae), aka the pink beard heath! This is a widespread shrub to 2m high that has typical beard-heath flowers: tubular and densly hairy (bearded) on the inside. The flowers are very small (1-1.5mm long), creamy-white with pink tips. #plants #photography

Lets get back into it: weeks microscopy features #Actinobole uliginosum! This plant is so tiny, only a few cm high, that you’d need to be on your hands and knees in the dirt to really notice it exists. It’s an #Asteraceae with cottony leaves and white-creamy coloured flowers.

Wrapped up my field work this past weekend by visiting Acacia daviesii (FFG listed critically endangered)!! Very bittersweet. I'm looking forward to the break but kind of sad I won't see my species for a bit.

#Thrips! Thrips are thrips both singular and plural, and if you do any sort of floral morphology or pollen work you'll come across a million of them. This guy was hiding out in an Osterospermum floret. #inverts #photography

A blue ant (Diamma bicolor)! She's not actually an ant, she's a wasp (though they're both Hymenoptera). A species I've always wanted to see. 🥹

Colour spectrum of Caladenia carnea (pink fingers). They range from hot pink, light pink, a faint blush of pink to totally white. Found out in western Vic. ❤️🩷🤍

Last week I had the most amazing time demonstrating LTU BOT2PDE students out in Natimuk, far western Victoria. Got my hands dirty with inch flora and saw some good flowers. 🌸

A few flowers from the weekend, celebrating wrapping up work at one of my field sites. Not my target species but so lovely to see. ❤️

Had a brief trip to Sydney and saw some very Sydney things. #binchicken

A few snaps of what's growing at one of my field sites that aren't my target species (I did not take enough time to photograph non-study species 😞)

Yesterday was national #wattle day! Here's my two Masters species, #Acacia daviesii (timbertop wattle, first two photos) and Acacia sporadica (pale hickory wattle, last row photos). Both critically endangered, I'm very lucky I get to work with them. ❤️❤️

This weeks #microscopy- #Plagiochila fasciculata! Featuring intercalary androecium (male reproductive parts). They're very common in wet forests and give off a strong camphor/mothball smell. I love getting students to sniff them (they often don't know what the smell is and find it revolting).

Swamp wallaby supervising my field work. 🥹

Zoopsis leitgebiana, a leafy #liverwort in the family Lepidoziaceae found in wet rainforests here in Vic. This was my first time spotting the species, so what a treat to photo it! It's leaves are bi-lobed and made of just a few individual cells. Very tiny species. #bryophytes

A few #Drosera from today! Such amazing little plants. The ground was absolutely covered in them.

#Zoopsis argentea! One of the smallest liverworts in Vic. This leafy liverwort's leaves are recuded to only two single cells (others in the genus don't have such reduced leaves). It's very common on logs and tree ferns in rainforests here. #bryophytes #liverworts

Fun little shot down the microscope of an Acacia polyad (pollen cluster) surrounded my bacteria after sitting in out in avsucrose solution for a few days. Trialing protocol for pollen tube germination. 😊

I got to go trudge through the muddy rainforests of eastern Vic recently, searching for threatened bryophytes. My favourite place. ❤️

I've been hard at work in the background setting up a new Redbubble account. 🎉🎉If you've ever wanted a print or sticker of my photography and art, this is the place! I'll be slowly adding more prints, let me know if there's one you want that I'm missing. 😊 BotanyByYen.redbubble.com

#Hardenbergia violacea! I've shared one of these photos before, but here's two new ones at different angles (including a look at the reproductive organs!). These will be blooming all over Melbourne soon.

#Oxalis pes-caprae, a plant with a unique feature called #heterostyly. This is a floral polymorphism where individuals in a species have variation in the position of their reproductive organs (specifically stigma and stamen). Oxalis pes-caprae is #tristylous, meaning it has three floral morphs.

Little Drosera.

Went to go check how far off my target species is from flowering and I couldn't help but look for #liverworts. This is #Chaetophyllopsis whiteleggei, a leafy liverwort absolutely covered in cilia. One of my favourites but rare to see.

Had a wedge-tail land right in front of us as we were driving into my field site yesterday. And, of course, this was RIGHT after I realised I'd forgotten my binoculars.

Some bits in Fryers Range State Forest, western Vic.

This week's feature- Prostanthera incisa. Their anthers are often clasped together and only seperate after being disurbed by a pollinator. Here the filaments and connective parts are white/pink while the theca are a vibrant purple. They are speckled with pollen that look like grains of rice.

Childlock doesn't work when your cat will sit on the button to turn it off. 🤦

This weeks #microscopy- #Rutidosis leptorrhynchoides (Button wrinklewort)! An endangered grasslands daisy in Vic and ACT. Daisy 'flowers' are liars- they're actually a whole bunch of individual florets! Florets develop from the outside in and each can create one seed. Alt text has more info.

Yuzu helping me plan for field work. At least he knows how to make the most out of a sunny day!

A bit of #microscopy for this week, featuring #Swainsona sericea! You can see its curved style with a line of hairs on its inward side (which is covered in yellow #pollen). This species is endangered in Victoria, but I was lucky enough to work with them on a reintroduction project in undergrad.

Art stall success! Big thanks to everyone who came by to support us students. 🥹

When I've not been busy with Masters work I've been prepping for an art stall at La Trobe uni's World Environment Day event! If you're coming along be sure to stop by the art stall and say hi. I'm selling various photography prints and stickers and would love to talk plants with you!

A rough little snapshot of #Grevillea #pollen from a workshop with year 10s today. Grevillea (and Hakea) pollen are triporate and have a triangular appearance! They're real fun.