#ambergate

Issue 1: The Ballad of Cass Kosa

This comic is a musical about an Incredibly Evil Lady going to hell. This first issue is a ballad, thus in ballad metre. Feel free to sing it to your choice of ballad as backdrop.

SybilKart

Microtis is derived from the Greek words mikros and ous meaning "small ear", referring to small, ear-like appendages on the column. media refers to the size, also it can actually be up to 60cm tall and has another common name - Tall Mignonette Orchid. All of them have long tubular leaves, hence the ‘onion’ and ‘mignonette’ part of the common name for the genus. 

An onion orchid species from the Yallingup trip that I managed to miss, earlier. It grows in shrubland and woodland, often in seasonally wet areas and on granite outcrops. Endemic to the southwest of Western Australia between Shark Bay and Eyre.

A small shrub, endemic to the SW, within roughly 100km of the coast. The binomial is derived from the foliage and its resemblance to Thyme, as noted when it was described in 1806 by the French biologist, Jacques Labillardière.

The plant grows in sand on granite hills and in areas that are flooded after rain - in this case, in the Ambergate Reserve south of Busselton. The flowers may appear between August and November. 

Synonyms include Grevillea brachyantha, glaucina, lactucifolia, quercifolia var. angustifolia and Hakea quercifolia.

Another SW endemic. Named after the shape of the leaves, which do indeed resemble the leaves of the spikier oaks, but more closely resemble holly - but Grevillea ilicifolia was already a thing. The genus is named after Charles Francis Greville, a British antiquarian, collector and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1774 to 1790. He was a very close friend of the botantist Sir Joseph Banks and both attended the organizing meeting in March 1804 of the precursor to the Royal Horticultural Society, the Society for the Improvement of Horticulture.

One of at least 3 species of Bull-ant running around the Ambergate Reserve (although I couldn’t get a good photo of one of them, since their reaction to noticing me was to leap and spin and run around in a demented rage, or just fling themselves into space from the top of whatever plant they were exploring. This one, on the other hand, while obviously unimpressed by my attention, seemed reluctant to abandon the honeybee it had found for dinner. 

From the Greek words mesos and melaino, meaning , meaning “middle, to turn black” , referring to the dark involucral bracts. Tetragona is also Greek, meaning with ‘four equal angles, square’. That and the common name probably refer to the  broad angle where the stem split at the flowers. All 5 species in the genus are WA endemics.