The seeds can be eaten raw but are more safely eaten after roasting removes irritant hairs. For speakers of the Ngan’gityemerri language, the flowering of B. megaphyllus marks the time the freshwater crocodiles are laying eggs.

Baldivis, Perth.

The indigenous peoples of Arnhem Land spin thread from the bark and use the thread to make necklaces, and bracelets. The rootstock of young plants can be eaten raw, and broken stems exude an edible gum that can also be used as a paint binder.

It grows in well-drained red soil derived from laterite, in Eucalyptus woodland.

Not many Australian plants are deciduous, but this one is bare of leaves from June to September.

It can grow to about 9m in height, but on the islands, or the coast as here, it’s usually wind-pruned to a much shorter maximum height.

Falcon, Perth

Endemic to Rottnest and Garden Islands off the Perth coastline, and parts of the Swan Coastal Plain, but widely planted as an ornamental and windbreak across the SW of Australia, so it now has a much larger if scattered distribution.

If they’re anything like better known stiletto flies, the larvae are predators that live in sandy soil, hunting other invertebrates.

Falcon, S. of Perth.

The newly hatched juveniles, known as crawlers, are quite mobile, but the limbs in the adults are vestigial at best.

Often found tended by ants, who protect them in exchange for honeydew.

Herdsman Lake, Perth

In Australia, at least, Palaemon and Palaemontes are more commonly found in saline waters. Herdsman Lake is unusually fresh, by their standards.

Herdsman Lake, Perth.

They can live for over 60 years, and reach over 120cm in length. Wild fish are usually smaller.

Herdsman Lake, Perth.

Helped by massive flooding in 1974, and probably by the way some fertilised eggs can survive passage through a waterbirds gut, they have established themselves in every Australian state territory except for the Northern Territory.

Carp were introduced to Australia in the 19th century but were not seen as a recognised pest species until the “Boolarra” strain appeared in the 1960s.

Wild populations are actually considered vulnerable to extinction these days, but the species has been domesticated, farmed, & introduced worldwide over the last 2000 years & is now on the list of the world’s 100 worst invasive species. A typical adult female can lay 300,000 eggs in a single spawn.

Namesake of the carp family, Cyprinidae. AKA common carp, Eurasian carp, or just carp, was originally native to nutrient-rich freshwater lakes and larger rivers in in Europe and Asia.

The Amphisopidae are a very small family, with only a handful of species and not much fewer genera. Some remain undescribed. Phreatomerus latipes lives along the margins of hot, saline springs in South Australia.

Herdsman Lake, Perth

P. palustris is the most common freshwater isopod in groundwater-fed wetlands on the Swan Coastal Plain, and shows signs in its genome that the various populations have very little genetic exchange, and may be on the verge of speciation.