Warming warning on the mountain

Even the cool, temperate island of Tasmania off the southern coast of Australia can’t escape the effects of global warming.

Hobart, already the second driest of Australia’s seven state capitals, faces severe drought with the onset of another El Nino event this southern summer.

Evidence is emerging in small but significant ways. Mount Wellington, which dominates Hobart’s skyline, is home to many rare plants, including nine of the ten known species of Richea, a tall shrub with spectacular foot-long flowers.

This year Richea Dracophylla (curiously, for such an attractive plant, it doesn’t have a common name) is flowering four weeks earlier than expected.

Cobber Elizabeth Perey took these photographs earlier this week.