Mallee Native Plants

Birds and Plants

No Comments »1st October, 2006; Category: Birds

New Holland Honeyeater

The bird life around here is fantastic at the moment. A family of White-winged Choughs often passes through, creating territorial wars with the Little Ravens. Both are feeding young. I had a Blackbird nesting in a stack of pots in my little storage shed. A New Holland Honeyeater is feeding young in a nest in Melaleuca lanceolata near the house. We can watch her coming out to find food and return to the nest from the dining room table. A lot of time gets wasted watching all this activity .

The insect problems around here would be phenomenal if it was not for the bird life on our block. The Rainbow Bee-eaters arrived yesterday. They are such pretty birds. They usually stay until around February. They tend to stay mainly around the creek at the back of our place, where they make their nests in the cliff.

While I was sorting plants one of the New Holland Honey-eaters flew past the box of plants snatching a small spider dangling on its web.

Brachyscome tenuiscapa var pubescens

2 Comments »30th September, 2006; Category: Daisies

Brachyscome tenusicapa var. pubescens

This little plant is a daisy 10-20cm high and 20-40cm wide and would make a great cottage garden plant in a shaded position during summer. It would also be good in a rockery or pot which is where I have it. I haven’t been confident about trying it in the ground. Now that I know how easily it is propagated I can try it in the ground. It is a little perennial in that it dies down during the heat of summer to reappear in autumn. It spreads rapidly by suckering and is the plant featured in the previous post. It needs root protection which can be achieved with gravel or stones or an organic mulch.

The flowers are mauve, 2-3cm across, and held above the leaves. It flowers in spring and autumn. It does best in cooler climates but is worth trying where a good mulch can be applied. It is frost tolerant to -5C. Snails and slugs love it, so precautions need to be taken. If the plant becomes tatty, cut the leaves off above the crown and fertilise and water.

Make New Plants…By Dividing What You Have

1 Comment »29th September, 2006; Category: Daisies, Propagating

Clump showing many new plantlets

Sorting plants today, I came across some native daisies and violets and grasses which were very tight in their pots. There were multiple plants jammed in as the original plant had multiplied over the past year. The way to deal with them is to divide the pot full and repot the smaller bits or plant straight into the garden. The same applies for a clump that has got out of hand in the garden. A spade can be used to dig up a section which can be divided into smaller portions, some to replant and others to pot on to give away to appreciative folk or placed on a fund raising stall. Let the plants settle and grow on for a few weeks before doing this. Now would be a good time to divide and repot if plants are intended as Christmas gifts. The plant in the photos is a daisy Brachyscome tenuiscapa variety pubescens.

The process is simple. Gather a serrated edged knife (like an old bread knife), secateurs, pots and potting mix and something with which to label the plant. Up end the pot and remove the whole clump. Examine the root ball to see where the divisions might be made.

Plantlets cut from the main clump

It is often easier to shake the potting mix from the roots so that individual small plants can be seen. Use knife or secateurs to cut between each plant, ensuring that some roots remain on each piece. If there are no roots on some good pieces place them in some propagating mix and treat as a cutting. The other pieces can be repotted or planted out.

Newly potted small plant

Eremophilas To Rescue

No Comments »26th September, 2006; Category: Drought Tolerant Plants, Eremophila

Eremophila purpurascens is one of the plants we need to rescue from the bulldozer. It is on the edge of the planting but will probably be damaged. We won’t be able to move it so as much cutting material as possible has been taken. After such a dry winter this is sparse so we put the hose on it trickling for half an hour to increase the material in this next week or so.

Eremophila purpurascens

This is a pretty plant one and a half metres high and wide, flowering from August to October. Here it has some flowers at other times of the year too. It is a Western Australian species from an area of granite but it copes well with the high pH of the soil here. It is actually growing in fairly deep mallee sand which provides good drainage. It is also frost and drought hardy.

Rescuing A Little Daisy

No Comments »24th September, 2006; Category: Daisies, Propagating

I met one of the Australian Plant Society members at the garden that is going to be bulldozed. We had to make an educated guess as to where the damage is going to be done. There are a lot of plants involved in the area.

One of the first and easiest tasks was to dig up a little daisy, Brachsycome formosa.

Brachyscome formosa

This is quite a small plant which multiplies by suckering. I have probably not given it the correct name. The Australian Daisy Study Group book on Brachyscomes calls this plant Brachyscome affinity formosa, meaning it is like it (known as Pilliga Daisy) but not quite. This one has a pretty mauve flower whereas Pilliga Daisy is cerise pink. It sends up new shoots away from the original plant. It is remarkably hardy. It survives by dying back during the heat of the summer, reappearing after autumn rains. We found dozens of little plants, some of which we potted with a view to relocating in the garden and others to pot at home as insurance. Considering the low rainfall here, this little plant is worth trying.
.