Emma Rooksby

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Articles

Celebrate 10 years of the HONK! Oz street music festival

Dec 30, 2024 | theillawarraflame.com.au | Emma Rooksby

Wollongong's HONK! Oz street musical festival turns 10 in January, and it's time to celebrate a decade of honking good fun. The festival is a veritable cavalcade of creative performing arts, mixing alternative community bands with related arts such as circus acts, lantern- and drum-making, belly-dancing and more. The colour, sound and general spectacle of HONK! Oz transforms the centre of Wollongong.
A classy grass showing off right now

Dec 19, 2024 | theillawarraflame.com.au | Emma Rooksby

Right now many local grasses are looking simply spectacular. I've previously featured the Native Sorghum (S. leiocladum), Basket Grass (Oplismenus sp.), Pygmy Panic (Panicum pygmaeum) and the Love Grasses (Eragrostis species) and they're all doing well. But this week's standout is the Red-anther Wallaby Grass (or Rytidospermum pallidum), which has been flowering just beautifully.
Flooding and Illawarra's native vegetation

Dec 17, 2024 | theillawarraflame.com.au | Emma Rooksby

Flooding is a major issue across the Illawarra. It has diverse impacts, many of them obviously negative, particularly on buildings and infrastructure, with flow-on impacts on personal well-being, community connections, and economic value and activity. It can be hard to see the positives.
Wake up and smell the Coffee Bush!

Dec 10, 2024 | theillawarraflame.com.au | Emma Rooksby

In fruit right now is one of the most common and widespread local shrubs of the Illawarra region: the Coffee Bush (Breynia oblongifolia). And it's looking spectacular!Before you get too excited though, I have to start with a disclaimer: this bush does not produce coffee beans, or fruit that look like coffee beans, and there is actually ongoing debate about whether the fruit are even edible! And I haven't yet found a convincing account of how it got its common name.
Fruiting now: the Cheese Tree

Dec 3, 2024 | theillawarraflame.com.au | Emma Rooksby

By Emma Rooksby, the coordinator of Growing Illawarra NativesThe Cheese Tree (Glochidion ferdinandi) is a lovely thing, particularly at the moment when many plants are in full fruit and covered in their colourful pinkish-red, very vaguely cheese-like capsules. Cheese Trees are some of the most widespread rainforest trees of the region. I see them at all sizes in gardens, on verges and in parks, not to mention in natural areas.
Resilient native meadows can cope with wet and dry

Nov 26, 2024 | theillawarraflame.com.au | Emma Rooksby

I've written about many of Illawarra's local native ground covers, grasses and ferns. Individually each species has its appealing (or not-so-appealing) features, and environmental preferences, with everything from grasses that prefer to grow in mud flats on brackish or saline water to tiny tough ferns and succulents that enjoy life on exposed rocks.
Flowering now, the spectacular Swamp Lily

Nov 19, 2024 | theillawarraflame.com.au | Emma Rooksby

With the warm and now wet spring we're having, many local plants are flowering and fruiting brilliantly. It's an excellent time to observe local native plants and see what they're up to. One local plant that is doing particularly well is the Swamp Lily or Crinum pedunculatum. This robust, salt- and wind-tolerant lily is flowering all around the place right now, including at the beach at North Wollongong, at Seven Mile Beach, and many other places.
Future Proofing the Cabbage Tree Palm

Nov 12, 2024 | theillawarraflame.com.au | Emma Rooksby

The Cabbage Tree Palm (Livistona australis) is an iconic palm species that is well known in the Illawarra, as it is very prominent along the highway in the Kiama and Gerringong areas. It is the more common of the two local palm species, occurring right across the region, in all kinds of rainforest, eucalypt forests on the escarpment, and also regularly popping up in gardens and parks.
Croom Bioblitz an opportunity for budding citizen scientists

Nov 6, 2024 | theillawarraflame.com.au | Emma Rooksby

This Friday and Saturday, local citizen scientists have the chance to explore and document the amazing biodiversity of Croom Reserve in Shellharbour. Croom Reserve is a precious remnant of the Illawarra's original vegetation, a beautiful place to take time out from the rat race, and also home to several threatened species and ecological communities.
Snow-in-Summer, a local tree showing off right now

Nov 5, 2024 | theillawarraflame.com.au | Emma Rooksby

I found it almost impossible to choose a plant to feature this week, as there are just so many species looking absolutely spectacular around the region. Wildflowers are still doing wonderfully in areas such as Maddens Plains, Sublime Point, Robertson's Lookout and Barren Grounds. And around town, many urban trees, shrubs and plants are blooming their heads off.