I will tell you about the gum tree buttoned with creamy flowers. Gardens tawny with tired sunflowers, late tomatoes, aubergines and squash. Magpies share melodic stories. The grass dry, grey and still, waiting for rain. Mice leave the fields and look for shelter for the Winter. Ambiguous skies, slow dusty sunsets and cool nights. It is cool enough to bake. After rain, a bonfire is safe.
We don't call it Fall. I don't think we should call it Autumn either. It feels more like the primary growth season for native plants, but is still a northern hemisphere Autumn for the species which still stack their defences against Winter instead of Summer. So our landscape is syncopated. Hatched with two different patterns of investment. Well three if you count the northern tropical areas which have two seasons; a hot Wet and cold Dry.
Some gardeners choose plants and planting times that use the European pattern of growth and flowering, this makes most sense in cooler climates such as Tasmania and some parts of Victoria. Others perhaps in warmer drier locations may plant in Autumn. The plants look like they're not doing very much over Autumn and Winter, but their roots are becoming established which will increase their chances of surviving the intense Summers.
In South Australia some trees do turn, remembering habits from other climates, they shed colour and stand bony and angular like shorn sheep or wet cats. The native plants keep their leaves and wait hungrily for the end of bushfire weather and the return of rain. For them this is a season for stretching roots into new ground, for pushing forth new growth. After rain gum trees blush pink with tender red shoots; a kind of antipodean Spring.
Some plants have adapted to flower in Autumn. The weather is less windy at this time of year, it’s mostly dry and there are plenty of pollinating insects, which spring flowering bulbs sometimes miss out on.
• Sternbergia lucia or the yellow autumn crocus which has a beautiful yellow flower and is a wonderful bulb that’s hardy and cheery in Autumn
• Colchicum byzantinum ‘Innocence’ is another hardy autumn flowering bulb. They come up without any foliage – that follows about mid-winter.
• Sea squill Urginea maritima from the Mediterranean has delicate flowers and it produces many of these up the stem which open over a prolonged period.
• Cyclamen hederifolium - one of the most beautiful autumn flowering bulb. They flower for ages, and once the flowers finish have marbled leaves in winter through until spring.