More Spring Flowers

Here are some more flowers from my garden, and from some friends' gardens.

Firstly some lovely Crocus flowers from George's garden - growing amongst leaves of Violets.
This plant has several names, but I grew up calling it Triteleia. It then was re-named to Ipheion, but I am not sure how widely that name is now accepted. It is a small flower, on very short stems. The leaves have a distinct garlic odour. It is one of the common early spring-flowering garden bulbs in Australia.This is a "Heartsease" Viola. A very small wild pansy, in effect. These little flowers self-seed in gardens. In fact they pop up anywhere. They are a very cheery flower, with typical "pansy" markings, and deep purple upper petals.Flowering Almond is one of the earliest of the Prunus family. This is a single flowered form. This was flowering on 8 August.
This is a flower of a Polygala with a Flower Spider sitting there, awaiting a visitng insect.Here is another flower of the Polygala showing the brush-like structure of the stamens. These plants generally resemble "Pea" flowers, but they are structured differently, and are not related to Pea flowers.This is a double-flowered Plum - Prunus x blireana flowering on 8 September - a full month after the related Flowering Almond. This plant is renowned for its prolific flowering. This plant is relatively young, as it was planted less than 5 years ago, but already it needs pruning to control it. One of my favourite plants, which I grow for every reason other than its flowers. It is the Melianthus major, which means large Honey-flower. Local nectar-feeding birds, namely the larger Honeyeaters, love this plant. Lewin's Honeyeater, and the Little Wattlebird are regular visitors to this plant's flowers. The individual flowers are tubular, within the long brownish-red sprays of flowers. I first fell in love with this plant, as a child, because of the deeply incised grey-green leaves. It is a very large soft-bodied shrub - growing up to 5 metres high and wide froma simple cutting planted 5 years ago. In fact, it has been hacked back a couple of times already, and still is that size. Clearly it loves growing in Robertson's rich red basalt soil.