User Profile

Emma Rooksby

Emma Rooksby is a local volunteer bush regenerator and environmental educator who helped establish the Growing Illawarra Natives website. She is passionate about protecting and restoring local biodiversity in the Illawarra region and collaborates with many groups and individuals who share that passion.

Science & Nature

Latest plant mystery: What’s going on with the Sassafras?

The beautiful Sassafras tree (Doryphora sassafras) is a distinctive and very common local rainforest tree of the escarpment. It is present in many areas along the slopes and benches, but particularly the steep upper slopes. These upper slopes run...

Emma Rooksby

April 2025

Science & Nature

Happy National Eucalypt Day to the Grey Ironbark and other outstanding habitat trees

Last Sunday 23rd of March was National Eucalypt Day. There are events being held throughout March, right around Australia, to celebrate this absolutely iconic Australian group of plants. There are over 800 species of Eucalyptus, most of them only...

Emma Rooksby

March 2025

Science & Nature

Native Tussock Grass: a biodiversity bonanza

Illawarra is a real biodiversity hotspot, with many thousands of native species calling this place home. What a privilege to live among them! We live in a local government area with over 2,000 native plant species, hundreds of native mammals, and...

Emma Rooksby

March 2025

Science & Nature

New program calls for Guardians of the Grassy Woodlands

Right across the Illawarra, in urban parks and reserves, bushland patches and even in gardens and on verges, endangered species and ecological communities live among us. Our urban and peri-urban spaces are habitat for the Koala, first recorded by...

Emma Rooksby

March 2025

Science & Nature

A majestic rainforest tree lurking in forests near you

This week’s entry goes back to the plants themselves, this time an unloved and unlucky vine that usually gets very bad press. The Silkpod Vine (Parsonsia straminea)

Emma Rooksby

March 2025

Science & Nature

Commelina confusion

The beautiful blue flowers of Commelina (Commelina cyanea), also known as Scurvy Weed, are appearing around the region in large numbers at the moment. There isn’t that much blue in the plant world, relative to other colours, so it’s always pleasant...

Emma Rooksby

February 2025

Science & Nature

Introducing Blackthorn and its butterfly friends

This is another article that didn’t start with a plant, but instead with an insect! Last week we had the adventure of the non-Stink Bugs on an Illawarra Flame Tree (Brachychiton acerifolius), and this week it’s the surprise appearance of a butterfly...

Emma Rooksby

February 2025

Science & Nature

The strange case of the stink bug that wasn’t

Social media is lighting up in 2025 with images of all kinds of insect: native bees, bugs, beetles, flies, wasps and many more. Invertebrate biodiversity really seems to be having a moment. I normally use this column to write about plants, but am...

Emma Rooksby

February 2025

Science & Nature

Yellow Hibiscus blooms in coastal swamps

In flower right now is one of the prettiest local Hibiscus plants, the Swamp Hibiscus or Hibiscus diversifolius. And that’s really saying something, as Illawarra is home to the splendid Hibiscus splendens which I featured a few weeks back. Swamp...

Emma Rooksby

February 2025

Science & Nature

Sniff out a Fragrant Fern near you

Illawarra is home to dozens of ferns, as attested by the new book by local botanist Kevin Mills, South Coast Ferns. They come in all shapes and sizes, from tiny filmy-ferns to tree ferns 20m tall or more. I love seeing each and every one of them...

Emma Rooksby

January 2025

Arts & culture

Celebrate 10 years of the HONK! Oz street music festival

Wollongong’s HONK! Oz street musical festival is in its tenth year this January, and it’s time to celebrate a decade of honking good fun. The festival is a veritable cavalcade of creative arts, mixing alternative community bands with related arts...

Emma Rooksby

December 2024

Science & Nature

A classy grass showing off right now

Right now many local grasses are looking simply spectacular. I’ve previously featured the Native Sorghum (S. leiocladum), Basket Grass (Oplismenus sp.), Pygmy Panic (Panicum pygmaeum) and the Love Grasses (Eragrostis species) and they’re all doing...

Emma Rooksby

December 2024

Science & Nature

Flooding and Illawarra’s native vegetation

High rainfall events and flooding are regular occurrences in the Illawarra region, as in many parts of the world. The last four years have included three very wet summers (due to influences such as La Niña phase of the El Niño-La Niña Seasonal...

Emma Rooksby

December 2024

Science & Nature

Wake up and smell the Coffee Bush!

In fruit right now is one of the most common and widespread local shrubs of the Illawarra region: the Coffee Bush (Breynia oblongifolia). And it’s looking spectacular!! The foliage and ripe fruit of the Coffee Bush (Breynia oblongifolia). Perhaps...

Emma Rooksby

December 2024