Green (or silver) and gold

This here is the wattle
The symbol of our land
You can stick it in a bottle
You can hold it in your hand

Monty Python

Even in the depths of winter, there's a wattle flowering somewhere. They are lighting up the woodlands and glowing like beacons along the freeways.

In her Bushland Notes published in the Melbourne Age newspaper in the 1960s, Winifred Waddell wrote this of the winter blooms:

Wherever you go toward the end of August you can see wattle blossom. On the coastal dunes, it is Coastal Wattle, with ... branches hung thickly with catkin-like rods of yellow. In the heathlands it may be Spreading Wattle or Spike Wattle ... In wet places the earliest flowers may be those appearing on Acacia verticillata. This is a graceful shrub, pleasing to the eye.

In northern Victoria you could hardly count the wattles flowering now. Some, like Golden Wattle, are trees, but most are dwarf and bushy and so densely covered with blossom that you hardly see the leaves ...

So here are some glorious, luminous blossoms at the Points Arboretum, Coleraine, and Tower Hill in SW Victoria.