New Zealand Spinach (Warrigal Greens)
Tetragonia teragonioides (Warigal Greens or New Zealand Spinach), is another bush tucker plant which is popular in restaurants which serve bush tucker foods. You would pay a premium price for a dish containing this, so grow your own.
It is a ‘juicy’ plant the leaves of which need to be blanched before eating. It is used in dishes in which spinach or silver beet would be used. Just make sure of your identification before trying any of the native plants as foods.
It seems to be a hardy plant for areas without frost. It is salt tolerant. Propagate by seed or cuttings.
Also take care that plants are not growing in or near areas that have been sprayed with chemicals! Friends had looked forward to a feast of field mushrooms last week. Having cooked them they could not eat them as they could pick the taste of some chemical in them. Others possibly would not have been noticed the flavour except that these folk are ex farmers.
Kurrajong–Brachychiton populneus
No Comments »29th April, 2006; Category: Trees
This is the tree that I wrote about in the previous entry on the blog.
According to the Encyclopaedia of Australian Plants (Elliot and Jones), the Kurrajong is a widespread tree often found in rocky areas but also extending along river banks and plains in a variety of soils. The tree makes an excellent shelter belt and shade tree for home gardens, parks and street planting.
The foliage is liked by stock. Young leaves are tinged with pink. The trunk has grey bark, although it is green when young. Flowers are 1-2 cm long, bell-shaped pink or cream with red flecks and blotches inside the bloom.
The roots of the tree were eaten by Aborigines. The fibres of the trunk were used for making fish nets and twine. Seedlings make excellent indoor pot plants.
Kurrajong are easy to grow although they may be slow whilst young, hence their success as potted plants. They respond well to slow release fertilisers and are drought tolerant. They do appreciate water during dry periods. They are frost hardy. The trees drop their leaves just before flowering. They can be transplanted readily.
This species is grown in the southern states of the USA.
Coffee from Kurrajong
I have been looking through an old (2004) Journal of the Society for Growing Australian Plants (Queensland Region). There is an interesting article on using the seeds of the Kurrajong (Brachychiton populneus) as a coffee substitute. The early settlers in the region first used it as such, including the explorer Ludwig Leichhardt. The seeds need to be husked, and then roasted like coffee beans, before being ground and brewed.
The tree is grown quite widely in Australia, including many areas of Southern Australia. The foliage has often been used as fodder for farm animals. They are often planted as ornamental trees in public parks. In summer the trees have clusters of creamy grey flowers which have red splotches all over the cream interior of the bell shaped flowers. The seeds are found in green seed pods, which gradually turn brown and then split open with yellow seeds.
Now is a good time to be looking for the seed pods. It is best to pick the lot once about a third of the pods have become brown. The problem comes at this stage because the birds love the seeds. Cockatoos, rosellas and choughs are partial to the seeds. Store the green pods out of reach of the birds for a few days while they ripen.
From the information in the article, it would be worth growing the tree to use the seeds, if you can win the battle with the birds.
The seeds have fine hairs which irritate greatly, so take care. Use a knife to split the pods and use a pair of leather gloves to rub the hairs off the seeds. Blow the hairs from the seeds and dry the seeds for a few days before storing them. (Watch out for the birds.)
Use a frying pan with a lid to roast the seeds on high heat, or if using an ordinary stove top pan stir all the while. This is how coffee is treated. The roasting is done according to the strength of the flavour you prefer. According to the article the flavour of the brewed ‘coffee’ is something like Mocha or long black Espresso coffee. The roasting is carried out until the Kurrajong seeds are the colour that you like in coffee.
Once roasted, the seeds are stored in a glass jar until needed for grinding. The suggested amount to use is a heaped dessertspoon of ground Kurrajong seeds per cup. Put the ‘coffee’ in a saucepan, cover with boiling water and bring back to the boil. Let stand a few minutes before straining and serving.
I don’t like coffee at all. I would rather try different teas. However I would be very interested to find out how this truly tasted.
Correa ‘Pink Pixie’
No Comments »27th April, 2006; Category: Correas
I continue to find lots of treasures in the Nursery. Three more Correas.
I found more Correa ‘Pink Pixie’ under the name Correa alba x pulchella. It is definitely the same plant when the flowers and leaves are compared. I should have enough to create a nice hedge. They grow to about 120-140cm tall by about the same width.
The loss of the plant in my friend’s garden is quite significant. When you consider that it took five years to get to that size, the space that will be left will be quite large. This is a problem often faced by people who lose a plant of considerable age. The ‘financial’ value of replacing with an equivalent sized plant, if it was possible, would be extraordinary.
More Correas
1 Comment »26th April, 2006; Category: Correas
My beautiful Correa pulchella ‘minor’ with white flowers is covered in blooms at the moment. (“Minor” because the leaves are finer than the usual form). The plant in the ground will not flower for another month or so. Sometimes it is a bonus to have these early flowers on potted plants, especially if I need a photo of the plant in flower.
Correa ‘Mannii’ which has very deep pink flowers and flowers prolifically usually, is looking very unhappy. It is about 17 years old, so I suppose it has to come to an end sometime. It is one plant that I will definitely replace somewhere in the garden. It is outside our bedroom window and has provided considerable entertainment with the number of Honey Eaters visiting the flowers over its long flowering period.
A friend’s Correa ‘Pink Pixie’, or ‘Candy Pink’ as it should be referred to, has decided to die. This is a gorgeous plant with pretty pink bells that are split so that the petals flare like a little skirt (hence the ‘Pink Pixie’). There is no obvious reason for the loss of the plant. Some Acacias (Wattles) will not live long in garden situations because they grow too fast with the additional water that is availabe, or the richer soil. Maybe this is the problem with this plant. I am glad I took cuttings from it a few months ago!