Archive for the 'General' Category

I had an email today giving the new site for the ASGAP (Association of Societies for Growing Australian Plants) Web site. One item of news interested me. There is now a site where one can track down Australian native plants by their common name. Some people are critical of the use of scientific names for plants but often there is no choice because there is no recognised common name.

Australian Plants Common Name Database

Posted at 6:42 PM, 27 October 2006 by Brian Walters

One of the complaints often levelled at growers of Australian native plants is that they seem to insist on referring to plants by their confusing scientific names. Sometimes there is no choice. Many plants just don’t have accepted common names and in other cases, the same common name can refer to several different plants (‘native fuschia’, for example can refer to Epacris impressa, Correa reflexa or Eremophila maculata, depending on who you’re talking to).Still, urging people to grow Archirhodomyrtus beckleri is not likely to result in increased nursery sales of that plant, whereas, recommending ‘rose myrtle’ might. So, perhaps we should use common names more often.

The Australian Plant Common Name Database can help with this – it can track down common names for a wide range of Australian plants. The database works in both directions; ie. you can enter a common name to find out its scientific name or vice versa. It also works at the generic level. For example, enter “Banksia” and the database will return all the common names for the various Banksia species.

Definitely a very useful resource.

I have been quite surprised at the number of species which will germinate in the winter. I thought I had actually lost the seeds as they were put in so late. It is amazing that chilling actually will stimulate germination. At the moment I have a packet of Callitris canescens (preissii subspecies canescens, I think) in the freezer. They will be sown later this week. It is the first time I have tried this technique for germinating seed so it will be interesting to see what happens.

The Hardenbergia violacea, a lovely royal purple form that is quite bushy rather than a scrambler or climber, are ready bto pot on this week. Some of the other pea flowers are nearly ready also. Unfortunately I lost the Sturt Desert Peas and will need to try again, perhaps at the end of August.

At long last IT Whiz Son is in the process of helping me to put photos on the blog 😀 . He also showed me how to do these Smileys!
I offered the inducement, with tongue in cheek, of a chocolate cake by snail mail as a huge hint that I would like this. I was feeling envious of some of the lovely photos I was seeing on other blogs.

I hope to put occasional relevant photos on the posts particularly of plants flowering in the relevant season. For example many Hakeas and Eremophilas are coming into flower in the district. I am also trying to put together a collection of photos of local species in flower. Most of what I have is on 35mm film. I need to learn the art of dealing with scanned photos too until I am able to get some digital photos.

The trick is to have the photos of a size that does not take forever to download. Son feels he has achieved this.