Grass Trees 5 & 6... an Update

I think these plants are now approximately

3 1/2 years old + maybe 1 year...

I'm not sure, I bought them at a garage sale!

These two little ones gave me the idea to try

growing some more plants with the seeds collected from

Grass Tree No.1 growing in my front yard!

An altogether successful venture, both in achievement and results!

This is Grass Tree No. 5 which is still slightly

smaller the the one below!!

Grass Tree No. 6

If you click on this photo to enlarge you can see it has really started

to thicken in the center!

The leaves are very strong and the same thickness as an adult plant.

I haven't decided yet when to plant these two into the garden,

maybe another 6 months!!!

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This beautiful Blue Tongue Lizard

lives just behind our back fence... and came visiting.

No doubt looking for snails, bugs and other garden pests etc.

To read more about these lovely animals click here

After having a look at him we let him go back under the fence

and have seen him a couple of times since going about his business.

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Another lovely Green Tree frog

perched on the spouting...

Nearby an outside light draws small flying insects.

An attraction providing supper!

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Seeds

I have collected seeds from my Grass trees No. 2 & 7 in late 2009...

and I have possibly 100 seeds to Give Away.

If anyone would like to try raising their own little plants!

I am happy to send you some. (Australia only.)

Bearing in mind people...these plants take a long time to grow!

(Although the seeds can be fast to come up - 2-8 weeks)

Perhaps 20 each or less ... depending on response!

(I have no idea about sending seeds OS quarantine etc. so I'll stay out of that!)

I can't guarantee they will be viable seeds,

however I have an idea which ones look goer's by now,

the big fat ones!

Send an email to me with your name and address

and how many you would like!

clockyer@tpg.com.au

Once I have run out of seeds to give that's it.... till next time I get a new crop!

It seems a waste not give these seeds to someone to grow as

I cannot house any more little plants myself...

although I would love to,

I have enough already!

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1 Fatality to report!
I accidentally pulled a little plant out of it's pot ...

The plant had lovely long leaves hanging down and

I caught it on the lid of my rubbish bin!

And hoicked it out of the pot...

broken clean off at the bottom damn!!!

So there are

110 Grass Trees residing at this house!
102 of them seedlings!

Cheers Carol

Illawarra Flame Tree (N)

This beautiful Native Australian tree should be the choice
of local Councils instead of the Poinciana, (E)
although it is lovely! (see previous post)

A link to that great site Wikipedia... here
for more info on the Flame Tree

Our own brilliant flowering red tree has even
inspired a fantastic rock song!
Flame Trees sung by Cold Chisel
A link to Utube here!

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Bougainvillea (E).
This very attractive plant look wonderful decorating
the back fence of a nearby neighbour.
Another link ...hope it works!

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Another neighbour...
this Brushtail Possum jumped off the fence to
escape the human invaders (us) in his area!
The rotten apple he/she dropped was rather horrible!!
A beautiful animal!

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Grass Tree No. 7
This photo of a new spear was taken on the 25/7/o9.
It has taken 5 months for the spear to
reach the seed state you will see in the following photo.

(Click on any photo to enlarge.)
Here you can see the little seeds
still sitting in the opened pods.

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No Fatalities to report!
I have collected heaps of seeds from the two prolific
flower stalks mentioned over the last few months!
111 Grass Trees residing at this house!
103 0f them seedlings!

Cheers Carol

Grass Tree N0.9 is Planted!

Just after New Year - on the 6th of January we

planted this little tree into the front yard...no setbacks!

Going Great!

Also over this month

I have been collecting the seeds

from GT No. 7


Quite a Haul!
Some of the little pods had up to 3 seed in each Pod
Generally there was 1 seed per pod...which makes it easier to extract the
seed with the pointy tweezers.
I think approximately 80% of the seeds are viable!

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GT No.9 did not have as many pods but they developed
into some lovely big seed pods and some even have two seeds in them.

This is about half of the seeds I collected from GT7...
I forgot to take the photo of all of them!!
However I did put the match in there for a size reference.
If you look closely you can see on the left side center (9o'clock)
one little seed is rather puny...not viable I would think!



I will be planting quite a few of these seeds fairly soon.

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The Tally
The same as last post... No fatalities
and I fertilized the seedlings with Seasol (weak mix for natives)

66 seedlings in black pots
6 in the garden
2 in large pots = 74

Cheers Carol

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Fertile Seeds

I've been away for two weeks and G.L. has been looking after my little plants, and Boy! have they grown!

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This pot has germinated 3 seeds, I thought the seeds were a bit mangy, so I planted three in

in case... they all came up!

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Here we have 2x2 to the pot.

And just today another tiny one next to earlier sis/bro. Situated on the right in the center pot...hard to see...

(I don't know if Grass Trees have gender when a seed ... must find out about this!)

Update is: 83 in total

70...1 to the pot, 3 in 1 pot, 2 in 5 pots ...1 of the 70 looks as if it may cark it...

More later ... Cheers

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...