Christmas Bush

 

I found this little piece of Christmas bush, Ceratopetalum gummiferum on a walking trail not far from where I live. The cockatoos had broken off several pieces and left them lying on the ground. I spotted them and happily picked them up. Cockatoos like to bite things and can be very destructive to both vegetation and houses!  If I hadn't found a broken piece of this plant, I wouldn't have picked it.  Apart from it being illegal to gather wildflowers in NSW, picking flowers means that future seeds will not form, and there will be fewer plants growing in the future.  This can have severe consequences for a species, and in the past beautiful Australian wildflowers such as Christmas bells (Blandfordia nobilis) and Mountain Devils (Lambertia Formosa) were nearly driven to extinction due to humans harvesting the flowers in the wild.