Growing Grass Trees!

Friday, May 9, 2008

Two new Sprouts... are 86 and 87

*click to enlarge*

1. Planted 5/Apr./08 - Up 3/May/08 = 29 days...gosh!

2. Planted12/Apr?08- Up 5/May/08 = 24...not as long!

It's is cooler at night now 10-16 C. so I think this is a fairly acceptable period of germination. I have been setting my seedlings out in the early morning sunshine for an hour (approx.) The plants normally live under my back veranda in the shade. I usually water them daily with a spray bottle or give them a tablespoon of water for a good drenching once a week. This is a hit or miss affair and I just go with how I think they are looking...maybe if they look a bit dry I give a few extra squirts!!

They are pretty cute though!

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This Photo from the WWW it's called Dancing Blackboys...sorry I've mislaid the link. Google 'grass trees blogs' and it's in there?

This one also from the WWW and called Persistance, see how the plant is growing out from the rock! Tough little dude!

This trio is clearly very old...

I wonder if they are ok... it looks as if there is a fence and concrete in the background of the photo so they have may transplanted to this site!! The one on the right looks pretty good though!

*Click to enlarge*

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Tally still 94 in total.

Cheers

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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