Odds and Ends: Direct Tree Seeding...The Value of a Tree...Will the REAL Callistemon "Captain Cook" Please Stand Up?...After the Virus...Beaufortia and the Duchess of Beaufort...A Remarkable Red Wattle.
2. Small Bottlebrushes
Two readers suggested the following small bottlebrushes to add to those mentioned last time:
* * * * *
From Leanne Davis......
"Callistemon "Little John" is a good small bottlebrush. The one I have is about 5 -6 years old and is only about 50 -75cm tall (and just as round). It has kept is nice round shape very well without much pruning. The flowers are more of a dark red, than a bright red, and mine has flowers on it for most of the year."
* * * * *
From Jeff Howes.....
"There are not too many low growing Callistemons to choose from. However I have successfully grown:
C. subulatus which grows to about 1.2m, it is very hardy and will tolerate some shade. Has red flowers but needs regular moisture to flower reliably.
C. pinifolius. This plant has fine foliage and grows to about 1.5m. It is insignificant until it flowers. Two forms are available, one has green flowers and the other red with gold tips on the anthers. Very hardy and needs to be pruned hard after flowering.
I would not suggest one tries to grow C 'Little John' as I have yet to see one flower regularly and it also suffers a caterpillar (or something) that destroys the growing tips. It must not be too bad, as it continues to be sold in nurseries.
Why not use the dwarf form of Calothamnus villosus? It 'nearly' resembles a bottlebrush in flower, or 3/4 of one, is hardy, attractive, red flowered and grows only 1m tall."
* * * * *
Thanks Lynne and Jeff.
Jeff's comments regarding C."Little John" reflect my own experience. Here is western Sydney I have found it totally unsuitable. It's hardy.... but that's about all. It flowers poorly, if at all (probably not enough natural rainfall here), and seems to be forever covered with webbing caterpillar.
This is a plant which has been widely promoted and sold and it would be useful to find out the places where it performs well (and where it's not so good). Let's have details of your experience.
3. The legalities of collecting
Val Williams, President of the Australian Plants Society (NSW) writes:
"In regard to legalities of collecting, I have been reading up on this with the aim of getting out an information sheet for NSW. The position as I understand it is that you can collect anything if you have the right permission. To collect in a National Park in NSW you need permission which is obtainable from the Head Ranger of the Park. To collect on Crown Land you need permission from the National Parks and Wildlife Service I read recently. To collect on private land you need permission from the landowner. (All plants on a property belong to the landowner.)
To collect plants listed in the schedules to the Threatened Species Conservation Act 1995 you need a licence from NPWS which is a difficult at the moment but we are talking to NPWS about that."
4. When is a native not a native?
Craig Heading had a recent experience which shows that we have still a way to go in educating the nursery industry about Australian plants....
Craig wrote.....
"I was sold a plant at the nursery called "Hypericum calycinum" which they told me was native. I have looked up my "encyclopaedia" by Wrigley and Fagg which mentions Hypericum japonicum as being native. I have searched the net for info on Hypericum calycinum and cannot find any mention of where it is native to!!!!
Can you help?"
* * * * *
According to The Encyclopaedia of Aust Plants, there are only 2 native Hypericums.... H gramineum and H.japonicum. Both are widespread and occur in all States. I could find no reference to H.calycinum but thought that it could be an obsolete name for one of the native species or one of the 6 or so exotic species that have naturalised in Aus.
Craig, however, took matters into his own hands......
* * * * *
"I took the plant back to the nursery after finding only 1 obscure reference on the Net as to nationality of the Hypericum in question which indicated somewhere in Europe. The nursery told me all hypericums are native to Australia. I said "crap" and they looked in their book. It comes from Turkey apparently!
I swapped it for a Correa reflexa - prostrate flavoured so I'm happy but it just shows the nursery trade has a lot to answer for still when it comes to native plants......."
* * * * *
Indeed it does....."all hypericums are native to Australia"!!! Hmmmm. perhaps they were thinking of helichrysums, but even that isn't correct!
5. More on raised beds
Jeff Howes writes......
"My experience in raised beds was interesting. Great for two years but after that the earth worms that were in the clay base had used up all the humus in the quality imported soil mix and I was left with a very sandy type soil that is very hard to to get moisture to penetrate. However all the plants are thriving, so in my case getting them up off the clay soil was beneficial."
6. Greywater
A couple of responses on the use of "greywater" on Australian native plants......
* * * * *
From Gerry Roe.....
"RE: the note in the last APO newsletter asking about the use of greywater on eucalypts. This may be of no help at all, but many years ago I read a book called "The City Forest" by an Australian named Paul Yeomans, also author of "The Keyline Plan". (I have actually wished I could find these books again, or anything that carried on Yeomans' work, but never have.) The City Forest was about using city wastewater on a surrounding forest. Since the work was done in Australia, it wouldn't be surprising if Eucalypts were used, but I really don't remember."
* * * * *
From Bob Weston.....
"About "greywater", I've heard/read somewhere that the Alice Springs sewage is being spread through a plantation of River Red Gums E.camaldulensis. Maybe, your enquirer could contact the Council in Alice Springs and get a bit of a run down on its experiences."
* * * * *
If anyone knows more about "The City Forest", please let us know (particularly if it mentions use of Australian species).
Although sewage effluent is not really "greywater", there are a number of towns which irrigate native plantations with this material. One that I'm familiar with is at Windsor in western Sydney where a number of eucalypt species are irrigated successfully. Apparently the foliage is collected for koala food for the Sydney Zoo.
To get back to the original topic...we would like to hear from anyone who has used greywater (effluent from laundries and kitchens) to irrigate native gardens. Both successes and failures......
Finally....
Please let me know if any links in the December issue of APOL don't seem to work or lead nowhere. I had to change a number of links in the various pages to accommodate the OzEmail URL and may have missed a few.
Best wishes
Brian
Brian Walters,
Society for Growing Australian Plants (SGAP)
Email; brianwal@pnc.com.au (personal or SGAP)
sgap@ozemail.com.au (SGAP only)
[ Return to Newsletter Archive ]