Growing Grass Trees!

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Grass Tree No.1

Seeds and baby plants

This is the long seed stalk on the plant our No.1 plant, it is twice the length of the No.2 plant which we bought at Big W. Definitely different varieties I reckon!

Seeds

These seeds are in a plastic strawberry punnet, so you can see that they are fairly small, approx 9 0r 10 mm long and 4mm across at the widest point. These seeds are inside little pods when on the plant...there was generally only one seed in each of the little pods. I gathered most when the pods were just opening and let them dry and open...

Next time i will leave them a bit longer I think...

5 little plants

These are the results of my first go at propagating the seeds... there were three others, two were very pale and died ...I think they were missing their chlorophyll gene! the other one just died.. however I was really pleased when I managed to have 5 survive my amateurish efforts... the dates on the pots are 30/Oct/07 and 12/Nov/07. (photo taken 25/Feb/08)

Latest photo of Grass tree No.1

The spear goes brown and dries off, then the top crumbled away and the whole thing fell off. The plant looks great, really lush and healthy, and as we have had a rainy summer I expect that was the main reason why!

More next time...

Grass Trees… Xanthorrhoea

Grass Trees… Xanthorrhoea species only grow in Australia and developed early in evolutionary stakes for flowering plants.

They are very slow growing, but mature trees are centuries old, the lifespan can be 600 years! Unfortunately they have been reduced due to careless land clearing and land development. Respect for this species is easy when one considers also the valuable use to humans.

Without destroying the tree, Aboriginals ate the white, tender sections of leaf bases and roots, and collected the seeds to grind into flour. The resin at the base waterproofed their canoes, fixed their axe heads and spears. They also fermented the nectar to have a celebratory brew!

Early Colonists were also inventive, using the resin for their dwellings on floorboards and walls, stove polish, soaps, perfumes, incense in church and later in the manufacture of early gramophone records! Plant this Australian landscape icon.

It is fire tolerant, frost hardy, and drought resistant.

The flowering spear attracts honey birds and native bees and butterflies and provides a shelter for lizards. Of course the grass tree is agelessly stylish and a great investment for garden design

Native or Exotic Plants

#A Native plant means that it’s
endemic to this country – Australia.

*Exotic plant is one that has come
from another country - not Australia

? This means that I don't know if a
plant is N or E and will try to find out.

Weeds...
A weed is a plant that is growing in
the wrong place at the wrong time
therefore you can have a native
plant that is a weed.
For example the umbrella tree
is a native Australian tree
but should be growing in the
northern tropics where there are
insects etc. that will eat it
and keep it’s growth and spread
under control,whereas down here
in the sub tropic (Brisbane) they
tend to take over every thing and
spread like wildfire.

Rockpool

My generation is dying, after long lives
swung from war to depression to war to fatness.
I watch the claws in the rockpool, the scuttle, the crouch—
green humps, the biggest barnacled, eaten by seaworms.
In comes the biggest wave, the irresistible
clean wash and backswirl. Where have the dead gone?
At night on the beach the galaxy looks like a grin.
Entropy has unbraided Berenice's hair.
We've brought on our own cancers, one with the world.
I hang on the rockpool's edge, its wild embroideries:
admire it, pore on it, this, the devouring and mating,
ridges of coloured tracery, occupants, all the living,
the stretching of toothed claws to food,
the breeding on the ocean's edge.
'Accept it? Gad, madam, you had better.'

Judith Wright.
1915-2000