June 2018


Volume 45 No 5

Bees & Other Pollinators

Dr Michael Batley

Guest speaker at our Bi-monthly meeting on 23rd June at Gumnut Hall.
Dr Michael Batley, is a Research Associate Entomologist with the Australian Museum. He has a special interest in Australian native bees and has co- authored “Native Bees of the Sydney Region – A Field Guide” as well as much research on our native pollinators.

Join us for this talk about the fascinating mutually beneficial co- evolution of our Australian pollinators and flowers, which has intrigued humans for centuries.

Pollinator on Zanthorrhoea macronema
Photo: Dr Marilyn Cross

2018 Regional AGM and Quarterly Gathering REPORT

What a day for our Group! We hosted about 70 visitors at Gumnut with new Life Members coming from Newcastle and Armidale for the day. The morning activities included a great bushwalk with Jennifer Farrer and a visit to Ian Cox’s lovely garden in Kenthurst. Gumnut Hall was the perfect venue with everybody fitting comfortably into the hall and using the undercover outdoor spaces to full advantage at before and after the meeting. Plant sales were in full swing courtesy of Brian Roach, Lloyd Hedges, Lesley Waite and Pip Gibian.

Peter Olde, himself a life member of APS NSW, gave a presentation entitled – “When is a Grevillea a Hakea?” which updated us all on the latest botany and related taxonomy of these two important plant groups. A complex taxonomic topic but Peter’s presentation skills were there as always and the interest of the audience never flagged. We await further developments with much expectation.

Perhaps the most gratifying element was the involvement of so many Parra Hills members to make the day work so well. Meeting equipment, hall set up and clean up, the scrumptious afternoon tea and the sense of welcome to our visitors were a credit to all. Parra Hills Group continues to develop teamwork and camaraderie which is so gratifying to see. May it long continue!


Calendar

June
Sat 23 Bimonthly meeting at Gumnut Hall, Gumnut Place Cherrybrook at 2pm with guest speaker Michael Batley on “Bees and other Pollinators”

July
Sun 1 Blue Mountains Annual Seminar – Rewilding and Australian Native Plants, Charlotte Mills
Mon 9 Deadline for Calgaroo news and articles
Wed 11 Propagation Bidjiwong Community Nursery
Sat 28 North Rocks Plant Sale 8:30am – 5:30pm


Wisdom from the past

from Ian Cox

One of the valuable benefits I found when I joined the Parramatta/ Hills Group was that I could mingle with experienced members. From them I could often pick up gems of wisdom. Here are some examples.

Probably the most valuable piece of advice I learnt was from Ross Doig. It was just two words: “be ruthless”. This was in relation to native gardens of course! I have put this into practice many times, sometimes taking a while to convince myself. And it usually works out for the better.

The main philosophy is to remove non-performing plants from your garden early on, without waiting for another year or two hoping they will improve. You can then replace them with other plants you think will look better.

Following this advice sometimes results in a pleasant surprise. Three or four years ago I decided to get rid of a grafted Grevillea dielsiana that was getting old and woody and not making much new growth or flowering well. I used a chainsaw to cut it down to within 12 inches of the ground with the idea of digging the roots out later. However, it had other ideas (plants can think, of course!). It started shooting, and now it’s as good as ever, putting on a magnificent show of flowers as I write this!

When you were out with Ross on a bushwalk Ross would always be “over there” – off the track scouring the bush looking for unusual or rare plants. You could ask him about any native plant from the Sydney region and he would know precisely where it grew. I can still see his photo on page 3 of the Sydney Morning Herald just after Haloragodendron lucasii was rediscovered after it was thought to be extinct.

Another gem of wisdom came from John Evans. John used to say “do all your pre-winter planting before ANZAC Day”. The idea behind this was to allow the plants time to develop roots and become established so they can withstand the forthcoming cold weather. And it works! I’ve never had much trouble with new plants over winter, even though I get a few days of frost.

John’s front garden always looked amazing, especially the Sturt’s Desert Peas. The hybrid grevillea named “John Evans” was sourced from his garden.

Max Hewett was another fabulous grower of native plants who was generous in sharing his vast knowledge. One of his principles, reflected in his conversations and writings, was to try to duplicate in the garden conditions of the plant’s natural environment. This involved soil, aspect, drainage, etc.

In Max’s garden at Cherrybrook his various garden beds had different soils to suit the relevant plant groups. These soils were specially formulated with unique chemical and physical make-ups. For many years he was leader of the Verticordia Study Group and was able to grow a lot of these lovely Western Australian species to perfection in Sydney.

When I acquire a new plant I usually use Google to see where it grows in the wild. This gives me a clue as to where to place it in the garden. Sometimes the plant tells you where it prefers. I’ve found that a particular eremophila grows best in a position near the house foundations, which conveys that it probably likes alkaline soil.

Thanks to pioneers of growing native plants like Ross, John and Max, we now have much more practical knowledge available to us.


Banks and Banskias

With the 250th anniversary of Cooks discovery of Australia fast approaching, come along and learn about Joseph Banks, botanist on board the Endeavour, and the genus Banksia, named after him.

The life and legacy of Sir Joseph Banks talk by Rhonda Daniels

Wednesday June 20 7:45pm

APS Sutherland Group Gymea Community Centre 39 Gymea Bay Road, Gymea


Victorian APS Event

Showcasing Goodeniaceae at the
12th FJC Rogers Seminar to be held in Horsham, Victoria 20-21st October.

For details visit:
apsvic.org.au/fjc-rogers-seminar

Coopernookia polygalacea Photo: Royce Raleigh

Keynote speaker Dr Kelly Shepherd, Senior Research Scientist based in Perth, whose interests include the ‘salt-loving’ samphires.

Guest speaker Brendan Lepschi from Australian National Herbarium talking about his interests in Melaleuca, Santalaceae and Goodeniaceae.

Guest speaker Neville Walsh, Senior Conservation Botanist at Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria.

Sunday includes garden tours to Wartook Gardens


APS Parra Hills Native Plant Sale

Visit our APS-Parramatta/Hills inaugural plant sale and grab yourself some wonderful natives for your garden, streetscape or balcony.

Find our table in the mall.

For sale will be:

  • Native tube specimens,
  • Native small potted specimens,
  • Selected books on natives and local native plants

With limited giveaways of past the journals: “Australian Plants” and “Native Plants for NSW”

Saturday, 28th July
9 am to 5:00 pm
North Rocks Shopping Centre
328-336 North Rocks Rd


Charles Massey: Call of the Reed Warbler

The farmer, scientist and author at home on his property, Severn Park.
Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian

Reading Charles Massey’s new book ‘The Call of the Reed Warbler’ has been a fascinating experience for me. While I’m largely city born and bred, I have a love of our native bushland, an empathy for all things living and a yearning to live closer to the land and to do things more in harmony with our natural environment. Charles Massey’s book gives insight into how our current industrial exploitative and extractive approach to farming might change to be more nurturing and in harmony with the natural world rather than seeing nature as something to be fought with and tamed.

Of interest to those of us who appreciate our native Australian flora (and fauna) is how Charles Massey’s approach also involves regeneration and use of our native bushland and grass species. He says farmers’ primary job is to ‘get out of nature’s way’. To let nature’s ability to self-organise and regenerate happen. To this end, Massey tells stories from many farmers who have been working contrary to the advice of traditional farming proponents. Massey cites these rebel’s success and most encouragingly, their consequent resilience in the face of our Australian climate extremes.

Massey’s regenerative approach to farming includes ‘rotational grazing’ or ‘cell grazing’ which involves intense pasture grazing for short periods, then allowing the pasture to rest and regenerate in between periods of grazing. Interestingly, this approach allows our native grasses to reappear in pastures even when they have long been missing. And substantially reduces the need for both pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilisers, and more particularly, for ploughing.

Part of the regeneration process involves use of forestry which, combined with careful management of water flows across the landscape, encourages more water to be held in the soil. Integral to this system is a ‘richer, more diverse and ecologically regenerative concept of agroforestry’.

The story he tells of a family in the New England tablelands demonstrates his point. After seeing the catastrophic ’New England dieback’ of almost all remnant paddock eucalypts, the Taylors, long- time farmers in the district, in 1979, after generations of clearing away the native vegetation, began to replant trees on their farm. They started with radiata pines, as they observed that the dieback was due to massive predatory insect attack which would also destroy new eucalyptus seedlings. But this was only the start of their experiments which evolved to include planting over whole paddocks along contour lines, ending up with ‘engineered woodlands’ of varied native species. The Taylors have found that overall farm production levels are not adversely affected by putting 15 to 25% of the farm back into vegetation, and in fact, in some cases, the increased vegetation cover actually increased production. Hence, by utilising our native flora and fauna, his farm has become more resilient and profitable.


How to grow a native Australian grassland

by James Beattie

From gardendrum.com May 23 2017

This article is the first in a two part series on establishing native Australian grasslands in a garden context, specifically for nature strips in the Melbourne area, but equally relevant to Sydney and NSW.

A great example of the prairie school – Frogmore Gardens here in Australia

Prairie and meadow styles of design have enjoyed a huge interest from gardeners in the last 20 years, and little wonder. Who doesn’t love the delicate ballet between blocks of breeze-catching texture punctuated by drifts of subtle colour? The most beguiling aspect of this burgeoning popularity in Australia for me has been the almost complete lack of popular interest in our native grasses to achieve a similar aesthetic. In Australia we have an ecotype that beautifully mimics a prairie-style sensibility – our own native grasslands – once biodiverse wonders that blanketed vast swathes of temperate regions throughout the southeast of our continent.

There are so few well-managed grasslands left that people can go and see themselves, which goes a long way to explaining their absence in our gardens. In Victoria, where I live, less than 1% of grasslands exist compared to their previous range. As gardeners we often ‘ooh and aah’ over rare plants we grow, the vast majority of them exotic, but there are a plethora of local, indigenous grassland plants that are just as deserving of the title. A sound way of ensuring their existence into the future is to grow them yourself.

I set out to try and create a native grassland, turning my nature strip over to native grassland plants just on 20 months ago. The results have been incredible, I’m very pleased with the way it’s shaping up. Aesthetically I think it a very beautiful thing, though I’m sure some pedestrians probably walk past it and wonder when that skinny bloke is going to mow his bloody grass. Far more stop and linger to take a closer look, some delight further still by asking questions.

You really need to want one in order to have one, they’re not easy things to establish and their maintenance requires more ecological than gardening-thinking. They take effort and careful planning, but then what good garden doesn’t?

An intact, but not well-managed local grassland with chocolate lilies and yam daisy adding seasonal colour.
14 months after planting

I worked in bushland management for several years, managing and monitoring some wonderful little patches of remnant grassland around Melbourne. The experience was a steep learning curve, requiring a horticology approach rather than an ecological or horticultural one. It was often tough graft, but the time spent was invaluable. Getting to know patches of grassland around your area is a great start*.

Dichelachne micrantha at the Geelong Botanic Gardens. This is one of the must underused of all Australian grasses!
Spear grass catching the light

While native grasses such as ‘poa lab’ (Poa labillardieri) have been in the collective conscience for a number of years, many other grasses have missed out. Broadly speaking, there are several genera of garden merit that make great additions to grassland-style plantings. These include, but are by no means limited to, the wallaby grasses, Rytidosperma spp. (formerly Austrodanthonia spp.); the spear grasses, Austrostipa spp.; kangaroo grass Themeda sp.; tussock grasses, Poa spp.; and plumegrass, Dichelachne spp. As a collection of genera they represent hundreds of species to choose from. They make up the bulk of grassland biomass, though this list isn’t comprehensive by any means. My advice is to learn about them, what they look like and how they grow. They’re all different and provide a myriad of textures and colours at your disposal to design with.

All of the above grasses give great value over a long season. Whether they’re gearing up to flower, setting seed or have long dehisced it, like all grasses they go through seasonal changes several times a year and look ornamental at every single one. My favourite time of year in my grassland is late summer. There’s not a lot of colour around as the weather’s very hot, but the wallaby grass species I have planted retains its glumes, its empty seed heads, for months after the seed is shed. Glumes on mass in the afternoon light, catching a zephyr, look as stunning as any flower you’ll come across.

High summer in my grassland. The glumes of wallaby grass and spear grass on mass make a striking effect.

Why Should You Want a Suburban Grassland?

Apart from there not being much of them left and their aesthetic beauty, once established (the tricky bit), ongoing maintenance is really very easy. Once you get a good coverage of grasses they are highly effective at choking undesirables out. What weeds do grow are easily noticed and hand-pulled. Furthermore, native grasslands don’t require any supplementary irrigation at all. The vast majority are soundly perennial – they will often brown off, almost completely in summer, which is a an ideal time to give them a mow. They will readily reshoot when cooler, wetter weather returns. Most of them ‘recruit’ readily – they easily spread by setting seed.

Establishing them well is all about getting your timing right with planting/sowing. Get this right and you’ll only have to water your plants in – they’ll never see the nozzle end of a hose again.

Native grasslands have huge biodiversity values, not just for the plants they contain. A vast number of insect species call grasslands home, many exist only to visit specific plants, which is remarkable. One of many examples: I have a couple of species of native bee that visit mine which are known to feed exclusively on wahlenbergia flowers. Many other similar relationships exist in my grassland and for every insect I identify there are probably a dozen more I don’t even see. A diversity of insects means a large population of potential garden helpers that will often help keep the populations of other problem insects in check. Toward the end of winter for last three years, I had massive problems with aphids on a Veronica perfoliata in my front garden. I haven’t seen any at all these past two years and I suspect the new grassland and its residents are probably responsible. These unseen helpers make pest management in the rest of my garden easier. Where they come from and how they find their way to a 2.5m x 8.5m patch of land in the middle of the northern suburbs of Melbourne is a great mystery to me, one I would like to solve, but I’ll also be content with the romanticism of continuing to wonder in the meantime.

Prepping Your Strip

Before you do anything check your local council’s rules around naturestrip gardening. They vary considerably between municipalities, most require a permit and others may even slog you a fee for the privilege. For Melbourne specifically, site prepping is best done in late summer/autumn/early winter, whilst aiming to plant in late autumn to winter (when rainfall is reliable and plentiful here) so get your permissions in order well beforehand.

It’s also advisable to think about foot traffic and put in a little bit of infrastructure to direct it through your strip. Many a nature strip gardener has torn their hair out at people trampling their plants. My advice on this front it to put in a couple of paths – people will use them instead of walking through knee-high grass, but not always! At the end of the day a nature strip is land that people will always cut across. For you own sanity just accept that this will happen, as getting a bee in your bonnet every time you see a person traipsing through it will only lead to a cultivation of madness, and others may see you as a bit unhinged. Let it go.

So you’re looking at your nature strip as a potential grassland – what do you see there now? There’s probably grass and likely a few different species of it. Kikuyu is common in Melbourne’s nature strips, as is Ehrharta erecta (panic veldt grass), couch, and winter grass (Poa annua) waiting to pop up once the weather cools off. There are likely broadleaf weeds too, such as dandelion species, flick weed, oxalis, chickweed and pimpernell, among many, many others. The critical thing to understand at this stage is that all these plants have been dropping seeds into your little strip far longer than you’ve been eying it off as a potential garden. There is a sleeping army of thousands (millions?) of seeds just waiting to germinate and cause you grief. Grief bears an inverse relationship to enthusiasm – a parlous state that will put your grassland at risk in the future. Avoid it as best you can.

To make the establishment of your grassland as least stressful as possible, your existing nature strip grass needs to be cleared and this weedy seed load dealt with somehow. You’ve three main options on this front:

  1. Scalping the soil, taking at least the first 75mm (3 inches) off, seed load with it, and getting rid of it (expensive but highly effective in controlling weed seeds). A turf cutter does this job brilliantly well.
  2. Solarising the whole area by placing black plastic over it for several weeks in late summer – this will cook a large mount of the seeds, though not all, as well as kill grasses and broadleaves (effective on some weeds, but not all, and it looks atrocious). Steaming might also work but I can’t vouch for its effectiveness.
  3. Herbicide is another option (judgment on the ethics of their use should be suspended for the purposes of this article). It will clear grass and kill the weeds that are growing, but it won’t deal with the weed seed load at all. This option requires intensive hand pulling as weeds come up, mainly during winter.
Weeds killed off and simple pathways about to go in.

Deciding which you use will depend on your budget and the amount of effort you are prepared to put in. The bushland manager in me saw me using the last – killing off my kikuyu with herbicide and hand weeding what popped up. I spent a lot of time weeding, time that would make well-hardened gardeners shriek in horror. But there are two reasons why I went down this path.

Firstly, I rather enjoy weeding, especially with a beer in hand. The second is that hand weeding means you are down there on your hands and knees regularly, right at the coalface of your changing ecology, watching it and making observations of the little differences that emerge week-by-week.

You constantly learn about the plants and the way they grow together, often without realising it. If you hand weed you will soon be able to tell the difference between goodies and baddies, like a weedy Poa annua seedling and a local wallaby grass seedling. The phrase ‘getting your eye in’ applies here in a big way. If you get your eye down to this level and pick up those differences you’re well on your way to a successful suburban grassland of your very own.

If you’ve got this far, well done! I’m happy to answer any queries on the topic of site prep.

The next instalment will cover selecting species, planting, maintenance and a controversial question: to mulch or not to mulch?


Native Plants Help Fight Implant Infection

from University of South Australia

Every year about two million people are treated for infections associated with surgical implants and biomedical devices such as catheters, orthopaedic implants and contact lenses at a cost of more than $11 billion in the United States alone.

Adverse consequences resulting from bacterial infections include revision surgery, impaired quality of life of patients, serious health complications and even death, particularly among elderly patients.

A team of University of South Australia researchers has identified a new route towards infection-resistant coatings on biomedical devices by using novel antibacterial chemicals extracted from native plants. Experiments have shown that coatings of these chemicals prevented bacterial colonisation and growth on materials.

Currently bacterial infections that colonise and grow on the surfaces of implants and biomedical devices are protected by a biofilm layer that develops and forms a protective barrier over the bacteria, making it difficult to eradicate by administering antibiotics, according to Ian Wark, Research Institute Deputy Director, Professor Hans Griesser, who is leading the research.

“Our research involved attaching antibacterial compounds in thin layers to the surfaces of plastic sheet model materials used for fabricating biomedical devices, and then exposing the samples to bacteria.

The materials coated with the native plant compounds did not allow the bacteria to settle, but bacteria happily colonised the uncoated plastic surfaces,” Professor Griesser said.

Professor Griesser has been conducting research with Sansom Institute Research Fellow, Dr Susan Temple, who led the project to extract and identify antibacterial compounds from Eremophilas using plant material collected from gardens or the wild, with permits. “As little was known about the active chemicals in these plants, we looked at different species of Eremophila, before focusing on plants with a protective resin coating on their leaves, which we believed could be antibacterial,” Dr Semple said.

PhD student Chi Ndi from the Sansom Institute screened more than 70 different Eremophila species and hybrids and found some that were particularly active against bacteria that cause human medical implant and device infections.

Eremophila serrulata from Western Australia
Photo: Mark Marathon

Some of the chemicals extracted by Chi Ndi were then coated onto plastic materials by PhD student Hardi Ys from the Ian Wark Research Institute and in collaborative research their antibacterial effectiveness has been studied.

“To our knowledge nobody else in Australia is looking at the biomedical applications if native plants. Having an antibacterial that is completely different to current products being used does have an advantage in that it’s not going to select for resistance to other antibiotics that we need to treat infections,” Dr Semple said.

Being able to isolate compounds with antibacterial effects helps to overcome the limitations of current technologies aimed at fighting infection. It has the potential to deliver a breakthrough solution, with enormous benefits for both human health care and Australian biomedical device manufacturers.

“Some of our research was guided by Aboriginal medicine and an important part of my work has been working with Indigenous people,” Dr Semple said. “But we are not trying to take their medicines and patent them. Our research focuses on the biomedical application in terms of surface coatings, which is quite different to traditional usages,” she said.

“ We would like to involve Indigenous communities in establishing and managing the cultivation of the Eremophila species on farms in remote communities and inland.”

“In some other antibacterials that we have worked with in the past, we’ve encountered a very tight line between being effective against bacteria and damaging human cells. The fact that some Eremophila species have been used by Indigenous people suggested that there was a greater chance that these could be safe,” Professor Griesser said.

“We are patenting a possible solution to implant infections based on encouraging preliminary results and have estimated a two-year timeline to obtain definitive results on the effectiveness of these compounds when applied to several different types of biomedical devices,” he said.

* Professor Griesser is a member of APS SA and the Eremophila Study Group


Sannantha tozerensis

Mt. Tozer Myrtle (Vulnerable)

by Jan Sked

I was very attracted to the renamed, vulnerable Sannantha tozerensis (Mt Tozer Myrtle) that also featured in Save Our Flora.

Pronounced san-ANN-tha toe-zer-EN-sis and in the Family Myrtaceae, S. tozerensis had held both the names of Babingtonia tozerensis and Baeckea sp. Mt. Tozer.

Sannantha tozerensis
Photo: M Fagg from Atlas of Living Australia

S. tozerensis originates from Mt. Tozer on Cape York Peninsula where it grows in open positions around the margins of large flat boulders. It is listed as “vulnerable”.

It is a bushy, spreading shrub, to about 1 metre high and 1.5 metres across, with aromatic, shiny, dark green, oval-shaped, rather leathery leaves, up to 1.2cm long. The small snow white open flowers face upwards along the branches making a good display in summer and autumn.

They attract birds and insects This most attractive plant makes an excellent medium sized shrub that can be used as a screen or can be pruned into whatever shape you like, including a formal hedge. It also makes an excellent tub specimen. It benefits from pruning of spent flowers at the end of summer.

S. tozerensis prefers a sunny, well drained position in the garden and is a tough, drought tolerant plant once established.

Propagate from seed or cuttings of semi-hardened wood.

* Jan Sked is a leading member of SGAP Queensland.


Parramatta and Hills District Group

SECRETARY: Caroline Franks

Email: apsparrahills@gmail.com