22/11/2025
Come along with me for a little journey to millions of years ago
You may already know that in the 1800s, before the Greenbushes area was known for its pegmatite deposit, it was a watering place for thirsty folks travelling along the Bunbury to Bridgetown trail. It was called the Green Bushes Well, earning its name from the endemic bright green shrubs that grew nearby along the watercourse.
The photos are of a Greenbush or Wonnich (Callistachys lanceolata) in my garden. You can see how this hue of green would have stood out within the thick eucalyptus forest present at the time. We planted two next to our frog pond as stock tube size a year ago, and they're already huge & flowering.
Standing next to our Greenbush yesterday, I found a Trichocolletes species native bee buzzing around, pollinating (check out my story to see a little video). Known commonly as a Pea Bee, these native pollinators are specialist feeders with a diet consisting of Fabaceae family flowers and a life cycle that syncs with their Spring flowering times.
Did you know that bees began evolving from wasps & diversifying on our planet around 120-130 million years ago? And that their co-evolution with the Earth's flora has helped drive & shape the immense diversity of the wildflowers we all love today?
When Australia separated from Gondwana, our bees were left isolated from the rest of the world. The native bees here, like the Trichocolletes species in my garden, began diversifying over 60 million years ago and the Fabaceae family of plants, like the Greenbush, around 18 million years ago.
Therefore, the simplicity of "Greenbushes" town namesake by white man is because of a co-evolutionary story of a mutualistic relationship between a green bush and its endemic pollinators whose origins began millions of years ago.
And to jump back even further in time in Greenbushes... the age of that pegmatite deposit that is so highly sought after at this current time in humanity's history... well, that is approximately 2,500 million years old. That certainly puts a different perspective on the contents within the trucks rolling down the highway and the phone I wrote this post on.
