
CALGAROO A journey into nature Newsletter of the Parramatta and Hills District Group Australian Plants Society NSW Ltd Our vision: inspiring people to admire, grow and conserve native plants
Bushwalk to Lane Cove Bushland Park Saturday 24th April 2021
Pip Gibian
For our April activity we are going to Lane Cove Bushland Park. The area of the park we are planning to visit is very different from our usual
bushwalk haunts. It is still sandstone country, but this time it is a deep, heavily-shaded gully with a creek running down it. The vegetation type is wet sclerophyll forest. Tall trees, largely turpentines, provide the shade. Underneath these is a different world with a great many ferns and climbers. The understorey features young trees and shrubs, some of which are also found in rainforest. Most of the leaves are larger, greener and softer than those seen along sandstone ridges. This is the park in which Ray and Elma Kearney documented a large number of fungi and found undescribed species. no guarantee.

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Fungi are ephemeral, sometimes they are there in large numbers, while at other times there are none. Hopefully we will see some fungi, which can be highly coloured, but there is It has been an unusually wet season, so we might be lucky.
Members are best to arrive at 1.45pm ready to start the walk at 2pm on Saturday afternoon 24th April. This park is surrounded by housing, and some of the streets are narrow with little parking available. Hopefully there is adequate parking in Osbourne Road, just south of
Second Avenue, where there is an entrance to the park’s walking tracks. Lane Cove Council cares for its bushland better than some councils and the tracks are well made. There are fairly gentle slopes and well-constructed steps. If there is continued rain, it may be wet underfoot.
This outing promises to be very interesting, and quite different from those in spring last year. Although COVID restrictions have eased, please book with Jennifer on 0407 456 577. We still need to have an accurate record of who attends.
PROGRAM FOR THE REMAINDER OF 2021
24 April 2pm | Bushwalk Lane Cove Bushland Park |
15 May | APS NSW Gathering and AGM Kurnell |
22 May 2pm | Members’ Meeting Gumnut Hall – Propagation Workshop led by Lesley Waite |
26 June | Bushwalk – location to be advised |
24 July 2pm | Members’ Meeting at Gumnut Hall. Speaker Lachlan Turner “Bushland Photography” |
28 August | Bushwalk – location to be advised |
25 September | Bushwalk – location to be advised |
23 October | Visit Mt Annan Botanic Garden (to be confirmed) |
27 November | November Members’ Meeting |
After being closed for just over a year, The Hills Council has just opened its nursery to volunteers, but there are some restrictions. Unfortunately they don’t have everything in place to let us resume our propagation in April. Hopefully we’ll have better news for May.
Visit to Boongala Gardens in Kenthurst
Pip Gibian
Photos – Jennifer Farrer
On a sunny afternoon in March, twelve members of the Parramatta – Hills APS Group visited Boongala Gardens. This is an amazing native garden created over many years by Mal and Jenny Johnston. The land was previously totally-cleared farming land, and the transformation required a huge amount of work.
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A large variety of native plants are featured, growing on raised elongated mounds. Visitors meander along sinuous grassy areas, each corner revealing a new combination of plants. Being Autumn, most were not in flower, but there was some colour, particularly from the multitude of grafted grevilleas, Banksia spinulosa and Hibiscus germanioides. Grevillea ‘Golden Lyre’ was in full bloom, and many others had some flowers. Interestingly this garden exhibits many of the older, no-longer-sold hybrids discussed by Peter Olde in his recent online talk. For example, Grevillea ‘Ivory Whip’ was flowering well. There is no need for masses of flowers to make a garden interesting, not if you have bottle trees, Eucalyptus ficifolia covered in large gumnuts, and specimens of Dorianthes excelsa with huge flower spikes. Scattered around the garden are old farm implements, rusting sedately.
Mal is very interested and knowledgeable about early Australian history. He has constructed a little slab hut displaying more historic wares, convict bricks, photos and so forth, and he played the didgeridoo here for us. He also has hives of native, stingless bees.
After a break and afternoon tea, Mal took us for a walk through their rainforest, planted on the slope behind the gardens. Many of the trees are over 30 years old, and again there is a huge variety, along with ground covers, ferns and orchids. All this time, Jenny was serving in their shop. In the past Mal and Jenny ran a native plant nursery, Annangrove Grevilleas. They again sell plants during their open garden times.

Obviously, the group browsed and purchased there, before we went home. Look out for the opportunity to visit this magnificent garden. Their next open season will be in Spring 2021.
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New Banksia garden at the Australian National Botanic Gardens, Canberra
Jennifer Farrer

To celebrate the 250th anniversary of the visit to Australia by Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander, The Australian National Botanic Gardens designed a new garden to showcase some of Australia’s Banksia species.
What was meant to be a grand celebration did not happen because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, there was a very low-key opening by the Minister for the Environment early one morning late last year.
The garden is an experiment in extreme horticulture. Including the Banksia species from the Eastern states in the garden was a relatively easy exercise, but as we all know some of the most spectacular Banksias come from Western Australia where the climate is very different from that in Canberra.

To give these species the best chance to flourish, the garden has been designed with tall mounds of a specially designed sand-gravelly profile to give good drainage so that no water can accumulate around the roots of the plants. North facing thermal walls and paved paths absorb and radiate heat from the winter sun and shield the plants from the bitter winter cold.
Some hard to grow banksias have been planted in large mobile pots so that they can be placed under shelter to protect them from frost. Many Western Australian species have been grafted on to rootstock of Banksia integrifolia.
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One of the mobile pots

New foliage of Banksia lanata
As well as the plants, the garden has several art installations with a Banksia theme. At this stage of course the garden is very new, but already plants are flowering and flourishing. In a few more years it will be a stunning homage to one of Australia’s unique plant genera.

Banksia robur (Purple Form) in foreground of garden with Banksia integrifolia artwork.

Different Banksia leaf shapes are a feature of the central pergola.
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Newnes Plateau and the Gardens of Stone revisited
Words – Ian Cox
Photos – Lesley Waite
The Newnes Plateau is my favourite place to see rare and unusual plants. However, it was with some trepidation that Lesley Waite and I visited there on 11th
November 2020. We weren’t quite sure what to expect, as it was about twelve months since the massive and fierce Gospers Mountain bushfire had scorched through the area.
My previous writeup of a field trip to this wonderful place and its plants can be seen here.

At Clarence we turned off the Bells Line of Road onto the Glowworm Tunnel Road, and our first surprise not far from the turnoff was the massive sand mining operation. It was huge, and covered many hectares. Lots of native vegetation had disappeared since I was last here. You can see the widespread clearing in this picture from Google Maps – it shows mighty scars on the landscape when viewed from above:

Just a note about the condition of the Glowworm Tunnel Road. It had recently rained heavily in Sydney and the Blue Mountains, and I was slightly worried that the dirt road would be slippery. However, it wasn’t – it was actually very dusty. It was also rough, and we had to slow down many times to negotiate the potholes and ridges.
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Murray’s Swamp had been a highlight of previous trips with its rare plants and wonderful vistas, but today it was hard to recognise. It had certainly been affected by the fire, although there were signs of recovery. Celmisia longifolia (Snow Daisy) was flowering:




Grevillea acanthifolia (above) was germinating and reshooting, and we also found Grevillea laurifolia, but not their offspring – the natural hybrid Grevillea x gaudichaudii, which is usually present. Perhaps it was too early. There was also no sign of Boronia deanei or Isopogon prostratus, other rare plants previously found in Murray’s Swamp. We didn’t have the time to make a thorough search though.
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Along the road all the vegetation had been badly burned, but many eucalypts were resprouting. The colouring of the juvenile leaves on the regrowth of this eucalypt was outstanding:


And this tree looks very handsome in its new clothing of leaves!
I tried to identify these two eucalypts myself, and thought they could be E. dives (juvenile growth) and E. rubida (the tree). Just to be on the safe side I sent photos of them to Peter Hind, botanist ex RBG. Peter knows the plants here better than anybody, and this is his reply:
“It’s even harder to tell from burnt trunks. The tree is more likely to be E. mannifera (touch the bark to get white powder on your hands). The other common scribbly bark on the Plateau is E. sclerophylla grading into E. rossii. E. rubida is around on the Plateau but usually has a taller, straighter trunk and nearer creeks not on the flattter parts. The juveniles could be E. dives. E. dives does have bluish juveniles but the juvenile leaves are usually more rounded and there are hybrids around with other stringybarks.”

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Hakea laevipes usually reshoots from its lignotuber after a bushfire

Gompholobium uncinatum’s orange-red wings looked ready to take flight

Also, not far from the road, was Boronia microphylla

The decorative calyces on this Calytrix tetragona were outstanding.
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Towards the end of the road near the Glowworm Tunnel carpark we entered the amazing pagoda country and the Gardens of Stone. Here in the dry and exposed pockets of the pagodas was Leucochrysum graminifolium . This delightful herb is endemic to Newnes Plateau, and seems to grow in almost no soil – it is never located away from the rocks.


Near the Glowworm Tunnel carpark we spotted a male lyre bird foraging for food, who didn’t seem to mind our close presence.

Banksia penicillata is endemic in a few restricted populations on the Newnes Plateau, and we only saw burnt traces of this rare plant along the walking track to the Glowworm Tunnel. Hopefully it will germinate in the near future.
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Ferns almost cover the entrance to the Glowworm Tunnel. Once inside, the glowworms as usual gave us a glittering display. They can’t be photographed though without a tripod.
When walking back to the carpark we heard a mighty crash. It was very close by. One of the large eucalypts, weakened by the fire, had finally given up, and had collapsed across the track. We had to walk around and through it – but thankfully it could have been much worse. After returning home I emailed the National Parks office suggesting they send a chainsaw crew to clear the track. Later, I received a note of thanks.
The road tunnels and the Glowworm Tunnel are relics of the rail line that operated from 1907 to bring shale oil from Newnes. The railway was designed and constructed by the engineer Henry Deane, who was also an accomplished and active botanist. Boronia deanei is named after him.
This is a painting by Phil Belbin, and the caption reads: “With rapid fire exhaust echoing off towering sandstone cliffs, Shay Locomotive No 2 grinds around a sharp curve on the Wolgan Valley line in 1910.”

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This place is alive with history, botany and nature! What a wonderful day we had exploring the plants! We’ll certainly return after regeneration has had more time.
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If you would like to find out more about this unique area, there’s a PowerPoint presentation “The Gardens of Stone in focus” by Doug Benson here. There’s a further great article by Doug Benson “The Botanists Way” that you can download here.
Late news, and sad news:
– Betty Rymer, a Life member of APS NSW, and one of the most prominent and inspiring members of our Group, passed away on 3rd April 2021. There’ll be more about Betty in the May Calgaroo.
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Send your articles, comments, observations and photos for the next Calgaroo to itcox@bigpond.com

Parramatta and Hills District Group
SECRETARY: Jennifer Farrer apsparrahills@gmail.com 0407 456 577
EDITOR: Ian Cox itcox@bigpond.com
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