Life savers

Being a hopeless photographer, I have no idea why these floating nardoo leaves (marsilea drummondii) came out looking white when they were a deep green to look at. Nevertheless, the reason I took the photo was that, at the very time I spied the plant in the Mt Annan Botanic Gardens, I was re-reading the Burke and Wills story and was up to the part where, virtually on their last legs, the 2 men were fed for a few days on nardoo cakes the friendly aborigines made for them out of crushed nardoo roots. Apparently nardoo is a good survivor even without surface water.

January 2020