Sydney wildflowers – a walk amongst locals in spring

I love spring. It is my favourite season. An explosion of life, colours, smells and light. Every year it is a relief to finally feel spring in the air!

In Sydney, things are a little different. Most plants are evergreen and we get spoilt with many warm winter days. Yet spring doesn’t really happen until the blooming festival of wildflowers in the local forests herald its arrival.

∼ Er ist’s ∼

Frühling läßt sein blaues Band
Wieder flattern durch die Lüfte;
Süße, wohlbekannte Düfte
Streifen ahnungsvoll das Land.
Veilchen träumen schon,
Wollen balde kommen.
– Horch, von fern ein leiser Harfenton!
Frühling, ja du bist’s!
Dich hab ich vernommen!

Eduard Mörike (1804 – 1875)

The sweet, familiar scents of spring! In the days when waratahs and other wildflowers were abundant in Sydney’s forests, the spring aromas wafted to sea in such dense clouds that sailors reported smelling the wildflowers many miles away, so I heard from a National Parks Ranger.

In our times of a disappearing natural world, fewer wildflowers remain. Yet, fortunately, those who are left can be found not far from Sydney’s suburbs. On a little stroll around the Perimeter Walk near Terry Hills there were yolky Dillwynia yellows, cool Dampiera blues, and many different wattles out basking in the afternoon sun. A symphony of smells, a tapestry of colour! I hope you enjoy the photos – I certainly enjoyed taking them.

Dillwynia spec. – yummy yellow and a beautiful red zigzag crown

If I had taken my Les Robinson Field Guide to the Native Plants of Sydney I would have known to better pay attention to the LEAVES of Dillwynias. Their shape and arrangement can give the final species clue. It’s hard to tell from this picture how exactly the leaves are arranged. It was quite a tall shrub, at least 1.5 meters; and (as you can see) abundant with yummy Eggs and Bacon flowers!

Red spider flower – Grevillea speciosa

The red spider flower – one of my favourites. Yes, I have plenty of favourites ;-). I’d like for a crafty jeweler to make brilliant red replica earrings , please!

Grey spider flower – Grevillea buxifolia ssp. buxifolia

So pretty, yet so hairy! A true local, the grey spider flower’s native range is restricted to sandstone soils in the Sydney region.

White spider flower – Grevillea linearifolia

As all good things, Grevilleas came in threes.

Also in threes, but (even) more difficult to classify than the different Grevilleas were the wattles.

Acacia ulicifolia – aka Prickly Moses (I think)

Les Robinson describes those Acacia species with with leathery dry leaves (or rather “phyllodes” as they are morphologically speaking not true leaves) as “easy to classify”. Well, I disagree! To me, there are still too many look-alikes .

So many tiny flowers on this cylindrical inflorescence!

The skies were yellow with wattle flowers

As promised, a cool blue Dampiera:

Dampiera stricta

So blue! No wonder the dainty flowers caught William Dampier’s attention when visiting Australia’s west coast in the 17th century. Dampiera species are more abundant along Australia’s western coast, but there are three species listed in Les Robinson to occur in Sydney as well.

Finally, some pics from two members of the Rutaceae. They contain some beautifully showy wildflowers:

Eriostemon australasius with visiting bee

 Eriostemon australasius close-up

Now this is pink! A beautiful Boronia with flowers galore! 

The plant guide – “bible” as I have heard it often being referred to – I used to prepare this post is Les Robinsons’s Field guide to the native plants of Sydney in its revised 3rd edition published by Kangaroo Press.

I also used this illustrated PDF guide http://www.marklucock.com/Wildflower_pdf_document_V1.pdf  and this website http://www.waratahsoftware.com.au/wpr-flora-lanecove.shtml

Growing peas on the balcony

Ever since I was a little child I’ve loved peas. Fresh peas. As with so many tender vegetables (fennel, kohlrabi, capsicum) they taste magnitudes better fresh. I urge you to forget about frozen or worse canned or jarred peas! Try the fresh stuff – and grow it yourself. Because by the time it arrives in the supermarkets and grocers it tends to be sad and limp.

The good news is growing peas is easy. I learned it as a child. My mum prepared the bed and with a stick made a light furrow. And I carefully laid the peas, about a centimeter deep. I was eager to get as many peas as possible so my mum had to constantly remind me not to place them too close to each other. Covered up with soil the first shoots emerged and grew quickly.

And the same is happening again as I am growing (too many too close) peas!

Two weeks ago I prepared the bed. In this case, a plastic planting pot for my balcony. I mixed a general potting mix (from Bunnings) with some wood ash that I collected from a wood fired oven. Garden or Dolomite lime will work as well. Everywhere I looked it said “add some lime” – which is not a very precise (satisfactory) instruction. I added about two cups of ash into 15 litres of soil. Let’s see how the peas go with that – so far so good 😉 Look at these shoots!

An army forest of two week old pea shoots

They are lean and lanky, probably because they grow in a more shaded spot stretching for light. I hope a strong wind or cold snap won’t force them down.

I sowed two different varieties. On the left, shot up 15 cm in only two weeks are Snow Peas from Mr. Fothergill’s Little Gardeners line. On the right, only just emerged have the shoots of “Greenfeast” another one of Mr. Fothergill’s  seeds packets (from last year actually, so I’m glad they were still viable).

Given the speed of growth – one can see the difference a day makes without time-lapse! –  I realised it was high time to put up a support for the tendrils to grab onto. The balcony railing is  only another 15 cm away, and I was too lazy to get any other materials than those I could find in the house & garage already. So I simply tied some household (cotton) string  around a nearby shoe rack which functions as a stool for other pots, the container’s edges, and the railing.

 

This should build a sufficient bridge to guide the peas to the railing where they can go wild. Oh sweet peas of mine 🙂 I can’t wait for them to flower!

White is for freshly stripped bark

The suburbs have turned into a catwalk of trees showing off their new costumes. It’s a transformation made for summer: Shedding the old tight winter bark to reveal a fresh new skin. Stripped free from their old overcoat, tree trunks shine like porcelain polished in anticipation of important dinner guests.

Showing off the new skin – a pair of North Shore Eucalypts (E. saligna possibly?)

The old bark crunches in protest, curling and twisting on hot pavements. It cuts into soft soles. Some skin remains resilient and holds on to creases and crevices.

A little patch of skin holds onto this magnificent Eucalypt

Like a make-up artist softly blurring harsh surfaces some trunks are touched up with a patina of powder.

Eucalyptus branch finely dusted

Twist your heads, look up! Suburban sidewalks are turned into catwalks, forests into fields of fashion. Thrown down grey barks for a white celebration of summer.

My Toastmasters Ice Breaker speech – one for plants

My Toastmasters Ice Breaker speech only took me about one hour to write. You certainly don’t have to twist my arm to get me started on plants 😉 So here it is – Curtains up for “Nuts about Plants” the speech:
 
“Chances are, that after my speech today, you will think I’m nuts.
But to use this ice breaker speech to share something about myself and not to address what I am about to talk about would mean to not tell you about something very important to me.

So let me get it off my chest and confess: I have an obsession with plants. Much of my time is devoted to thinking, reading, speaking and writing about plants. Once in a while I also get my hands dirty trying to grow them. Above all though, I feel I have to tell the world just how amazing plants are.

Where does this urge stem from, you might wonder? To be honest, I don’t really know. It might have something to do with my upbringing in a small village surrounded by nature. My grand-parents and parents have always had a big, wild garden and they taught me a deep appreciation of plants.

But what is it that makes plants so special? Oh, there are so many things, but these are my top 3:

1. First of all, they are green.
   Well, that might not strike you as too special.. Responsible for the green colour are biologic powerhouses, the chloroplasts. Chloroplasts harness light energy and in the presence of water produce oxygen. This process is called photosynthesis. Not that the name matters all that much. What really matters is the oxygen. We can’t survive without oxygen. Try holding your breath, and see how quickly your body will revolt, trying to overcome the situation and you’ll be gasping for fresh air. Our lives depend on oxygen. And every breath we take is a celebration of life – life made possible by plants.

 

2. Plants provide for us in many other ways, too. Food is the obvious one: Fruit, vegetables, nuts, spices – the colour and flavour they add! – grains ground to flour and baked into bread. Even the animals we eat at some stage fed on plants. And there is more: Think about the clothing you wear – the cotton and linen fabrics -, the timber boards you walk on, the many plant-derived medicine there is – from calming chamomile tea to powerful anti-cancer drugs. Plants produce a massive array of useful resources.

 

3. And if all this isn’t yet enough to make a really strong case for plants, for me, there is one more: Plants make me happy. Seriously, I feel better when I am surrounded by plants. That’s why I enjoy bushwalking, visiting parks and Botanic Gardens. I also keep plants at home, and even have a plant on my desk at work.

 
Looking at the expression on your faces makes me think I might have succeeded in convincing you that I am indeed nuts about plants?

On a more serious note though I hope you agree that plants really have a lot going for them. And given the many aspects of our lives they touch this might very well be not the last of my speeches about plants.

Thank you.”

Autumn flowers of Muogamarra Nature Reserve

It is not often that one gets the opportunity to visit what has to be one of the most beautiful and historically significant nature reserves in the Sydney area: Muogamarra. Because of its significance and fragility it is closed to the public for most of the year, except for six weeks in spring and a few ranger-lead walks throughout the year. One of which I had the privilege to attend last Saturday (18 April).

Despite forecasts of scattered showers the morning sky boasted a nearly cloudless autumn blue. Approximately 15 fellow walkers had come up to the Reserve to follow National Parks volunteer Peter on a walk through the history of the site.

Admittedly, I had booked the walk mainly to get a glimpse of the Reserve’s autumn flora and immerse myself into the surroundings of a place whose natural beauty had blown me away on a previous visit. Others had their own agenda, too. Several Ingress players used the occasion to unlock otherwise inaccessible treasures and badges. Their GPS pings mixed with bird calls as we walked via historic huts and relict rock carvings to J D Tipper’s lookout.

I was fortunate to find a few very knowledgeable plant people amongst the other walkers. Soon were were discussing family features, plant identification tips & tricks, potentially introduced species (e.g. the Gymea Lily), and pointing out wildflowers and fungi (lots of them out after the recent rains!) along the way.

Time to share some of the successfully identified gems (thanks to Les Robinson’s field guide or pure knowledge of other walkers) we spotted:

Philotheca salsolifolia “You shouldn’t be flowering!” exclaimed the ranger upon spotting this Philotheca salsolifolia in front of a scribbly gum tree. Their usual flowering time is later in the year (July/August).

Allocasuarina distyla with colour-matching bug.

Acacia oxycedrus. The spiky leaves were not enough of a deterrent for a leaf-curling spider to set up its web.

The woody pear, Xylomelum pyriforme, is one of my favourite native plants. Not just for its awesome fruit, but also the pretty glossy leaves with their radiant yellow veins.

Scaevola ramosissima. Ramosissima means “much branched” and obviously refers to the leaves. With their fine hairs they reminded me of sundews. But that’s just me – the two have little in common.

Petrophile pulchella. I feel I owe the genus Petrophile an apology – up until this walk I had referred to them as Isopogon. Yet they are distinguished by their egg-shaped rather than round cones.

        Leptospermum squarrosum – detail of a 2m tall shrub with plenty of pink flowers and round fruit.

Angophora bispida. Some of the empty old gumnuts were visited by wasps, maybe to set up a nest? Unfortunately I didn’t manage to capture it on camera.

Hakea gibbosa. Whole plant view. Les Robinson describes it as a “grotesque, prickly shrub” whose “new stem and leaves are densely covered with loose, white hairs, giving the plant a frosty look”. I could certainly see it standing in front of the tree and I think the upper part of the plant also shows is in this picture.

Hakea gibbosa. Fruit detail. Gibbosa means “having a short, blunt spur or beak”. Yep.

Last, but not least, an unidentified mushroom. With its delicate robe it upstaged all wildflowers. Yet nobody could identify it. Does anybody know what kind of mushroom it is?

The above is but a small selection of plants and fungi we saw on the walk. It was a short walk of approximately 6 kilometers, but with frequent stops and chats it took almost four hours. Yet time passes quickly in such a rich environment. Personally, I can’t wait to be back at Muogamarra come springtime!

Spider spectacular!

It was a jam-packed weekend of activities in the Garden: The tomato festival invited to visit stalls, tomato tastings, plant & produce sales on the Band Lawn, plenty of kids explored Disney’s Fairy Trail, and for the romantically minded there was a massive red heart painted on the lawn in front of the tropical pyramid inviting lovers to showcase their best Valentine’ Day snaps on https://twitter.com/hashtag/GrassyHeart?src=hash

In the hustle and bustle the information booth served as an island of shade, a corner of quietness almost, only a few steps away from the main path and red train line.

Plus, it had its very own attractions: Not just one, two beautiful (and rather big – well, medium size for Australian standards) spiders were showing off there webs in the bed right in front of the booth, spun between palm and ponytail plant, in perfect height for viewing and photographing.

One was a golden orb weaving spider. One of the smaller specimens I have seen in the garden. Nonetheless, she was surrounded by several little spiders, males presumably who are trying to get lucky – and not eaten.

Not counting the long legs, orb weaving spiders can grow several centimeter big, with large (dependent on species grey or differently coloured) bodies. And yet they maintain a lightness as they elegantly sit in their webs. It seems they barely touch it, only holding on to it with the very tips of their legs.

It is certainly golden orb weaver season – their 3D web mastery is on display everywhere in the garden! Their webs are set up in bushes and trees, often overhead.

The webs glisten in the sun – make sure to look at the webs, especially the stronger (outside) threads from different angles until you can see its golden shine. You might even want to feel the strength and elasticity of the thread by carefully pulling on it. But be careful, the last time I slightly plucked on one of the outer threads the (understandably angry) spider came running towards me. Apparently they are unknown to bite, but better not to provoke her…

What a beautiful photo! View the original on Flicker: https://flic.kr/p/8UZJQN. 

The second spider on display at the information booth was a St. Andrew’s Cross spider. The web lacks the structural complexity of the golden web orb weaver’s but makes up for it by its distinct zigzag markings.

Another great pic shared on Flickr – check it out on https://flic.kr/p/2gTyiZ

Like the spider in the picture above, the one at the booth has only one zigzag feature. I can’t wait to see whether more “ladders” will be added over time.

The two spiders at the information booth are hard to miss. In fact they seemed to attract almost more attention than the booth itself! People stopped to take photos or to ask what kind of spiders they were. Some tourists hoped they’d be the famously dangerous funnel web spiders and they could finally have a closer look (after being warned Sydney would be teaming of them, yet (luckily) they tend to stay below the surface).

There are of course other many other types of spiders in the garden.

Garden spiders, though mostly absent during the day have set up their large webs. And the clivias lining the borders of the Palm Grove beds are known hang-out spots for net-casting spiders. Unlike spiders with big webs net-casting spiders make small (tiny!) webs i.e. “nets” that they hold between their front legs. Neither the nets nor the actual spiders who resemble a dried wood chip or a little twig are easy to spot, but it’s worth looking for these intriguing little animals.

 This photo is taken at the other side of the world, in Costa Rica, but the little fellow looks very similar to the ones you can spot in the Garden in Sydney. Look at the original photo here: https://flic.kr/p/bnc2pd 

Not only did I have the pleasure to look at the spiders and people taking interest in those spiders from the information booth, I was also lucky to discover a copy of the Green Guide: Spiders of Australia. An enjoyable and nicely illustrated booklet that fits in your pocket as you set out to explore the spiderful world. Enjoy!

Thoughts worth sharing – Peter Cundall

Since coming to Australia four years ago I have watched a few Gardening Australia episodes and even spotted some of the presenters in the Sydney Botanic Garden. Unfortunately, I missed Peter Cundall presenting the iconic program and have only read about him instead of seeing him in action on TV.

This comment of his was posted by 702 ABC Sydney today on Facebook and brought a big smile to my face:

A thought worth sharing me thinks 🙂  I hope you enjoy it.

#ThoughtsWorthSharing

Diary of a brush turkey

It was about three weeks ago when the brush turkey first appeared outside of our apartment block. He tentatively scratched the ground picking up a grub here and there, his low-hanging yellow wattle swollen with new house owner pride. The next day he was back to create and properly move into “number 31” of our block. His yellow wattle busily swayed from side to side as he set to scraping up grass, leaves, mulch and twigs from the lawns and bordering beds into what soon became a very decent nesting mound, towering higher than our community garden’s compost pile (which by the way took us much longer to erect!). During the initial days of building he never seemed to leave the nest for longer than a few minutes. When busy in a corner further away he regularly interrupted his scraping to sprint to the nest – to check everything was ok? – and quickly to return to further scraping, and the same over and over again. His Strava stats would have been impressive.

His nest is an impressive site of roughly three by one meter located in the shade of two old paperbark trees. What may sound like a secluded setting away from the traffic and curious onlookers is right next to the footpath, separated only by a fence.

The initial (small) pile

After the initial mound was established he slowed down his work – which was in favour of the nearby clivias whose roots took a bit of a beating. He also went to another bed that is separated by a footpath only to empty its soil onto the footpath. Good he has us working for him and cleaning up his mess. Brush turkeys are protected animals so hefty fines apply if we’d harm him. Also, they are apparently very difficult to persuade to give up their mounds or move their nest elsewhere once they have started building it – so best to just live with and manage him.

Judging by his big wattle he is an older bird and seems to know exactly what he is doing. So managing him means we leave him to it and in the interest of the other 30 units manage the mess he occasionally leaves behind. The best time without unnecessarily disturbing him is in the early evenings once he has left the mound to roost up in a tree. We are yet to find his roosting tree(s) as he can’t be seen anywhere in the ones in the immediate vicinity. Occasionally during the day he flies up into the tree right above the nest, but it’s not where he spends the night.

His mound of course has not gone unnoticed and rumors of it attracting rats and snakes have already started circulating. Surely he’d be the last to want rats and snakes around to threaten the eggs. It seems his enemies might be more of human than animal nature as he guards the mound and makes sure it has the right temperature as its material is decomposing to incubate the eggs.

The impact of his mound maintenance and continuous scraping for new material on the surrounding beds cannot be denied and there is some damage: Clivia roots lie uncovered, a few of the tender young plants were uprooted and quite a bit of soil and leaf litter moved – it’s a big nest after all. However, as we’re not growing any prize vegetables all uncovered plants seem to be replaceable – at minimal costs, too, as the local council provides some native ground covers for free. At present the brush turkey’s fate is undecided as the strata committee is yet to decide what to do (or not). Is it a bad omen that my sign “Please don’t disturb the brush turkey nest” was thrown away?

The established brush turkey nest

Wish him luck that he may nest in peace. Especially because he has been visited by females and there are most certainly eggs in the mound!

The ladies generally turn up early in the morning. I have seen him “lead” a female to the mound. Other mornings he just stands on top of the nest waiting for them to turn up. There are usually one or two ladies who visit, one morning there were even three! Only one female at a time seems to be allowed to join him on the mound. What exactly happens then remains a mystery as it is exactly when I need to leave for work (bad timing indeed). The other day though I caught him and a female on the mound.

She was busy taking it apart, digging so deep that steam emerged from the deeper layers. ‘Surely she must be so close to actually laying an egg’ I thought and got the iPhone out…

I stood patiently and filmed for what seemed an eternity. It might have been me intruding on this moment but she appeared to be more interested in digging than laying an egg – a behaviour he didn’t seem to appreciate either. We since refer to her as the “the crazy female” (but maybe that’s just the way the ladies behave 😉 ?). Or maybe the other female parading the fence got her chance after all?

What happens in the mornings between Mr. & Mrs. Brush Turkey clearly remains family business, but let’s hope they were successful and we will soon have brush turkey chicks emerging from the nest.

Attempts of DIY gardening

It has been a few months now that I’ve tried myself at DIY gardening. In a very controlled manner of a 1 x 2 meter plot at the local community garden. Despite the small size there has been a lot of room for learning, some successes and many failures. What I lack in general knowledge of gardening I make up with spurts of activity (often at the wrong time with the wrong intentions it seems) and experimental aka freestyle gardening.

Some examples…

Trusting that the tomatoes that self-seed in our plot will be tasty ones
To the right of this (rather wild) plot are our equally wild tomatoes. They outgrew anything else in no time, promisingly showed off various green tomatoes. Each plant seemed to have a different shape: from mini cocktail tomatoes to big fleshy Roma-like tomatoes we had the whole lot united by one feature: that of no taste! Really, honestly, openly, they were organic and they were wild, but they tasted like nothing. Worse, some of them just rotted away, hosted wormies (maggots of some sort I guess?), in brief could not be eaten. End of our tomato harvest dreams.

Next year: no tomatoes

Tomatoes gone wild

 

Throwing out chilli seeds at the wrong time
Really, I should have known better. Encourages by tales of lucky gardeners and the easy to grow stigma of chillies I set out to grow some myself in summer – possibly not the right time of year either. The result? Only few seedlings, all of them struggling…and the few that did emerge at all were then attacked by some chilli-leaf loving bug!

My sad chillies

 

Mint really (over)grows in all conditions
There is a rule in the garden that you’re not allowed to grow mint in beds as it tends to overgrow everything else. Naughtily I thought I could just have a few twigs of fresh mint in my plot. I was given a mint (unspecified) for free, so how could I resist? The experiment worked, the mint has successfully outgrown the Nasturtium (!) and is spreading happily. Unfortunately, the mint I have doesn’t have the greatest flavour and the leaves are a bit hairy.

What I believe my (free) mint really is

Time to demint at the next occasion, i.e. once I have decided what to plant instead.

 

Time for a plan!
No doubt this is my biggest learning. There is only so much harvest one lucky person can have from wild tomatoes, free mints, and sad chillies without leaves. So coming to the gardening game at the height of summer and without a clue (very much like the first settlers), as a first-year gardener I feel greener & keener than ever to make that plot work for me fulfilling all the promises of fresh herbs, lush lettuces and sweet berries. For this to happen I am preparing myself with a battery of books and sought advice from fellow (and successful) gardeners. May the seeds of carefully selected &  timely sown plants carry the sweet fruits of my ambition! In other words: wish me luck, I need it.

Magnolia grandiflora LEAVES!

It goes without saying that I love Magnolia grandiflora flowers – who doesn’t?

And of course botanically it’s all about the flower. Despite it all, the discovery of the day (for me) today were the autumn (well spring) colours of fallen Magnolia grandiflora leaves. Unable to decide which ones to pick up and which ones to leave behind, I collected a whole bunch and played around arranging them. Take a look: