Berkheya rigida flowering

The protective armature of Berkheya rigida convinces easily that the plant’s common name of wild thistle is appropriate. Long and short, big and small but always sharp-tipped, the prickly designs alternate in intricate patterns on leaves and around flowerheads in both vicious and appealing fashion.

Admire but don’t touch unless you are a trusted pollinator with unwritten landing rights and the concomitant skills. This slender, erect plant in bright yellows has a good chance of being noticed by insects seeking breakfast in the Salmonsdam Nature Reserve on this sunny November morning.

It may also, however, be that insects don’t visit here that much, for pioneer species that include B. rigida are often wind pollinated. The hardy first coloniser plants of barren environments or previously disrupted vegetation, such as by wildfire, tend to be missed by the insects that frequent the more established vegetation patches and have to survive by other means.

One imagines that "and" solutions are as prevalent and favoured over "either-or" solutions in nature at large as in social arrangements among humans (Curtis-Scott, et al, 2020; Manning, 2007; Bond and Goldblatt, 1984; iNaturalist; Wikipedia).