Flora of The (North Queensland) ‘Ville – V

Preamble

I once heard a local on a Spanish bus proclaim, as we topped a hill, and Barcelona in all its then hundred square miles and three-and-a-half million inhabitants spread out before us, “Es mi pueblo!” My local town is no competition, but it is my “village,” my pueblo, even if tone-deaf founders endowed it with the clanking name of “Townsville,” which I more often shorten to The Ville. This is a series of (brief) blogs about some flora you may chance upon in the The Ville during a calendar year

In my capacious state, “The Ville” lies far north of the state capital, Brisbane, and still well north of Capricorn, the official tropical zone marker, but though it’s now abundantly endowed with palms, The Ville sports no tropical rainforests or overflowing waterfalls. In fact, The Ville belongs in the category of Dry Tropics – that is, its rainfall is a long way from the heavy average needed to naturally support such delights.

Nevertheless, The Ville does have an abundance of flora, native or imported, and most months show some of them off to advantage. Note: For The Ville, the traditional four-season year cycle is not only inverted, at least if you live in the northern hemisphere, but also sways in and out of sync with the native seasonal cycle. And that has only two parts, the Dry, and the Wet. The Wet runs optionally from November to February, the Dry has the rest.

April – Advancing Into Autumn

Autumn in The Ville is not like the northern hemisphere. No brilliance of shedding deciduous trees, no grain or fruit harvests, no aura of mellowness or decay. Autumn in The Ville is the Wet’s departure: grass and foliage is still green, there are showers, there can be cyclones -the last, we devoutly hope, of 2026, just expired up near Papua New Guinea. There is usually a very welcome decline in heat and humidity and if we’re lucky, a succession of beautiful, blue, temperate days.

Without deciduous trees, or the blossom outcrops of spring and summer, colors in flora for April come mostly from species with spectacular leaves. All three of these are, for once, native to Australia as well as other Pacific areas.

Cordelynes appear all over The Ville, in house yards or parks, as ornamental plants or even hedging. Their colour is lasting, and they are mostly tough as old boots. These are Cordelyne fruticosa, down in a park along the river from me. They are probably tended and watered pretty carefully.

This one, au contraire, is a self-seed along my side fence, which emerged a few years after I came. I had my tree person prune it back last year, with spectacular results. Not sure precisely what sub-species of Cordelyne it is, but it makes a lovely, lasting bonfire along my fence.

Cordelynes are somewhat new-come to the Ville garden inventory, often filling roles earlier taken by hibiscus, ixora, and crotons. I can remember crotons in my maternal grand-parents’ garden, where they stood as separate ornamental shrubs. I don’t have any here, but they are still ubiquitous, and rightly so, being, like Cordelynes, both spectacular and tough.

These are both in my nearest local park, which has been a botanical garden, and has a great number of interesting and non-local plants. These crotons are particularly vivid at the moment, in the aftermath of plentiful rain during the Wet.

One (native) plant that is coming into bloom right now is a species of wattle. Usually, wattles are at their best in the winter, but the northern or black wattle is an exception, and with a lot of seemingly young or full-grown trees around, they are a fine display, especially along the river. These are a close-up and a full shot of a (relatively) large tree upstream from me. Well and truly flowering, and a lovely patch of gold against our (now) nice green foliage and (at last) clear blue autumn sky.