If you're in the Fairy Meadow area, a wander in Puckey's Estate is a great way to spend a couple of hours. It's a really popular place with locals and visitors alike, for exercise and recreation, and it's also somewhere that the slower you walk, the more interesting it becomes.

Last time I was there a couple of weeks back, the thing that really stood out to me was the striking cigar-shaped fruit on all the Silkpod Vine (Parsonsia straminea). Silkpod Vine is a local vine that occurs in a very wide range of habitats, including all kinds of rainforest, eucalypt forest and the littoral Swamp Oak Forest at the edges of coastal waterways.

Puckey's Estate must be the easiest place in the region to see Silkpod Vine doing its thing, as it grows on the gnarly Swamp Oaks (Casuarina glauca) that are present alongside the boardwalk in the estate, and then along the walking path to the north. It's not uncommon to see a dozen or more of these awesome capsules hanging off a successful vine! 

Today, when partner and I visited again, several of the capsules (also colloquially known as 'pods') had split open and the air above the walking track was full of these gorgeous silky-looking items, consisting of a single seed and a pack of long, fine hairs catching enough of the breeze to keep it aloft. Unfortunately, this was a photographic challenge beyond anyone present on the occasion!

The Silkpod Vine is one of many local vines in the Apocynaceae family (colloquially called the Dogbanes), a large family of plants represented in the region mostly by vines. Some, like the Silkpod Vine and Milk Vine (Marsdenia rostrata), are common and widespread, others are uncommon or threatened, such as the White-flowered Wax-plant (Cynanchum elegans).

There are also introduced Apocynaceae vines, such as the well-known weed Moth Vine (Araujia sericifera). This means you need to take care in identifying vines, to determine which species it might be. Features such as the presence or absence of milky latex (for which Milk Vine gets its name), and features of the flowers and fruit, are important in working out which species you might be looking at.

Congratulations to Emma!

Emma Rooksby is the coordinator of Growing Illawarra Natives, the chair of Landcare Illawarra and the winner of the Environmental Achievement prize at the 2024 City of Wollongong Awards. She writes a weekly column on native plants for the Flame.