Maybe it's because the silly season is upon us, maybe it's the recent heat and sunny skies, or maybe it's because I'm just too fixated on the finer details of plants, but I've spent the whole day in a swoon after happening upon the stunning, gorgeous, colourful globular fruit of one of my all-time favourite local shrubs.

It's the Lance-leaved Beard-heath or Leucopogon lanceolatus. One of the local heath plants that likes to grow in sandy, well-drained soils, it puts on an amazing display of fruit every few years. And this is the year. Look – so festive! (And yes, sorry, but I just had to work my terrible 'Look-a-pogon' joke into this article because my poor partner has suffered from it for so many years, and it's about time that the burden is shared.) 

Lance-leaved Beard-heath is predominantly a plant of the sandstone plateau areas, and you can see it at the summits of Mount Keira and Mount Kembla, where it grows in among the Hairpin Banksias, Silver-top Ashes and other Sydney sandstone species.

Interestingly, though, it does sometimes also find its way down the escarpment and I've seen it, to my great delight, growing in the escarpment foothills around Mount Pleasant, just one or two plants here and there. 

A good tell with this species is that the new leaves are rolled up into a narrow, pointy lance-type shape, a bit like the new growth on a bamboo plant but much smaller and daintier. Everything about it is just dainty, and delicate and interesting. The flowers too, with their tiny white bell-shape, are also just so... dainty.

Keep an eye out for this one if you're up at Djeera or Djembla, or at Bulli Tops or Sublime Point in the next few weeks!