~ Newsbits May 2010 ~

Visitors Welcome.

Next Meeting: Friday, 14th May  7.30pm for 8.00pm start.

*Venue:  Horticultural Research Station, Research Rd., Narara

*Guest Speaker:  Greg
*Topic:    Bees and Their Association with Flora
*Book of the Month Rose
*Plant of the Month Anne

Speaker For May

Our speaker for May will be Greg M. Greg is a bee keeper and has been a member of our group for many years and on the night he will be talking about bees generally and their association with flora.  Greg will bring along some of his honey for taste testing and hopefully some will be for sale.

Seed Donations Needed

Our Seed Bank Curator, John R., is running desperately short of seed.  Donations of seed are vital if the seed bank is to remain viable.  Please state the source of seed, whether from natural or cultivated material.  Do not send seeds from hybrid plants.

Speaker For April          Tim

We all recognize that their are four seasons, however, Tim E. Executive Director of the Botanic Gardens Trust in Sydney believes there should be more and he gave an interesting presentation and explain his theories.    The technical reason why we have seasons is because the earth moves around the sun changing the amount of sun and daylight we get according to the position of the earth to the sun at the time.  It moves in an ellipse not a circle which means we get further away from the sun at certain times of the year.  The perihelion is the time when the earth is closest to the sun and the aphelion is when it is furthest away from the sun.

Even though we define the seasons based on the length of day and how far away from the sun we are it is not fixed it actually varies and we base our seasons on those changes and that’s how it’s been done over many thousands of years right back to early civilization.

At the Botanic Gardens in Sydney the four seasons are reflected by a set of statues which were brought across from Italy in 1879.  But are the seasons that simple?

In the USA before 1956 the summer started on the 1^st June.  After 1956 it was thought that it should start on the solstice on the 21^st June.  In Britain according to the Oxford dictionary summer starts mid May to mid August and in the same dictionary it states that spring is from the 1^st February to the 30^th April which leaves a gap.  In Ireland summer starts on the 1^st May one month in advance of the USA and a little bit ahead of Britain

There are many books written about Samuel Johnson; he lived in the late 18^th century in Britain and wrote the first English dictionary and in his book spring is defined as ‘the season in which plants rise and re-vegetate, the vernal season’ so he is saying that spring is when we start to see changes and plants are doing something.

So when does spring start and when do things change?  It would seem that things start to change in August but most people think September.   Every year at the Botanic Gardens in Sydney they are contacted by the media or somebody from the community saying that spring has come earlier this year all the flowers are out in the garden the wattles are all flowering in the bush and is this attributed to climate change?  And the answer is the same as is given in previous years – “spring in Sydney starts in August when you start to see change and get the feeling that there is something going on”.  Just looking at gardens there’s a whole range of plants flowering in August following a lull over winter and in the bush in August there’s a whole range of Acacias coming into flower.  Generally across the country wattles are flowering in August with the exception of Tasmania where it’s a bit colder but around Sydney it’s definitely August.

Last year the media were very interested in the seasons following talks in a whole range of places.  There were headlines such as ‘confusion about the seasons’ and it also got coverage in the UK and in New Zealand with headlines like – ‘sprummer time – the living is easy’ and ‘Australians need more seasons’, while on the BBC it was suggested that us colonials were criticizing the four seasons that we inherited from Britain because they were useless in Australia and that we wanted to add two more seasons and opt out of the four that were handed down.

So although there are four classic seasons spring should be brought in a little bit earlier we should celebrate spring earlier in Sydney as well as over most of Australia.   There’s a season called pre-summer which is in between spring and summer, there’s a longer summer almost 4 months, and a short autumn that starts in April.  In March, 2-3 weeks ago, it was still quite humid and not feeling at all like summer was tapering off.  In coastal areas such as the Central Coast and in Sydney city there is a shorter autumn, so a 2 month autumn, a 2 month winter, 2 month spring and a 4 month summer.

 When names like sprinter and sprummer came up people got interested because they had something they could talk about.  The idea was that sprinter was the early spring, a cross between winter and spring and it comes a bit earlier and sprummer is the name for the early summer or late spring; it’s a little season in between the two.  Within a couple of weeks of doing these stories there appeared on the web a 13 page document that someone had put up about the seasons sprinter and sprummer.

This is not new there’s been no dramatic change, Aboriginal communities across Australia have never thought that there were just four seasons they look at 6 seasons – seasons based on temperatures and climate and what animals and plants are doing and they look at late July/early August as the start of spring.   Some interesting work was done by Allan Reid in the 1990’s called Timelines of Australia with participants such as Kevin McDonald, co-ordinator of the Nature Watch program, and Ken Shafer, a retired school teacher, helping with monitoring the changes in the environment looking at key changes and interestingly from their research they too came up with six two-month seasons.  They have the wattles flowering in July August, and there certainly are wattles starting to flower in late July, and then a high activity September October when more wild flowers are flowering and migratory animals and birds are arriving.

Rick Kemp is an ex teacher and an observer of nature and very interested in the seasons.  He is very interested in the solar system and believes there is a transition happening from summer to autumn based on the position of the earth and the sun with March still a part of summer.  In March there’s still heat in the soil and water and there’s morning dew so it still feels like summer.  Then there’s April May, a transition period, you get to the middle of June and are coming to the end of what he calls solar winter and there’s another transition coming with caps on the indigenous trees, buds on the sweet Pittosporum and things are stirring in the world.  So even in the middle of winter things are starting to happen plants that will flower in spring are budding up and the changes in day length will influence their flowering and its all going to be happening in late winter. Based on where we are in relation to the sun some seasons are longer than others they range from 89 days to about 94 so there’s about 5-6 days difference – they’re not exactly the same.  Coming into July the earth is at the furthest point from the sun and there are changes in sunrise, in August there’s a solar spring with temperatures going up and in Rick’s view the seasons are based around the equinox.

All along Rick has been arguing for this system based on fairly technical details rather than the viable the feel and what goes on around us with this sprinter season in August September, the sprummer, a big long summer and a short winter reflecting what is happening and changing in the environment around us. 

In August colleagues in Canberra were waking up feeling very cold and frosty saying it was nothing like spring it was definitely still winter and to shut up about spring and wait until it gets warm but nevertheless their wattles were all flowering so there was a change going on.

Spring can still be defined as being at the peak flowering time which is September but the question is whether you start to feel the season when things change or is it when it hits the peak flowering time?  Tim believes it is when things change and the flowers start to open and that’s certainly the time when people ring the Botanic gardens asking whether it is an early spring.

So we’ve learned that Aboriginal communities across Australia all have about 6 seasons but that each of them is different and the reality is you would need different seasons across Australia.  Traveling from Sydney to Perth or up to Darwin or down to Tasmania you would see different seasons, you could leave Sydney in sprinter but arrive in Tasmania in winter and it’s also different in Darwin to what it is in Sydney. 

We are too conservative to try and change the seasons but we could have a system where we could celebrate with festive days such as ‘Wattle Day’ or ‘Telopea Day’ etc.  ‘Wattle Day’ was first celebrated on the 1^st September 1910, it did move for a while to the 1^st August because they needed blooms for the 1^st World War and there were more around in August.  In 1937 they moved it back to September partly because it coincided with the school holidays but also because it was a national day across Australia, it was gazetted in 1992 and is now officially on the 1^st September to coincide with the first day of spring which is how it was worded in the gazetted notice.  In 2016 it will be the bicentenary of the Botanic Gardens and it would be good if in that year it could be re-gazetted nationally to celebrate the bicentenary of the gardens and Australia’s distinct flora seasons by having wattle day on the 1^st August.

 Predictions have been made about an increase in temperature by 1.5deg. to 3deg. by 2050.  There will be more rainfall in summer and it will be dryer in places depending on where you are in Australia they’re just predictions but the seasons will change.  Rick Kemp would argue that you shouldn’t set the seasons by flowering times that you should just stick with where the earth is in relation to the sun and don’t muck around with flowers.  There’s data around showing a 1-2 week quickening in the life cycle of grapes and some other work in the US has shown that things are happening about one week earlier; salmon are returning to the ocean about eleven days earlier and changes are being picked up that are being attributed to global warming or climate change.  In 2006 in Australia migratory birds are arriving a little bit earlier each year and departing a little bit later.

There has been some detailed studies that have found after an increase in temperature on average 43 species of plants have flowered earlier and the flowering times were actually correlated with the temperatures one or two months before the flowering so it’s in the season before you actually see the flower when inside the plants there is a great deal of activity and a whole lot of fascinating things are happening.  There’s also some interesting data on the Eucalypt genus.  In Australia there are about 800 or more and about 25% of them have a low tolerance to temperature change and its felt that a lot of them will struggle.   There will be impacts from climate change on all of our plants and the seasons are a way of helping us to keep track on what’s happening.

In Australia we have a programme just set up last year called Climate Watch which tracks changes going on in the environment and in any particular area.  It’s a good programme to get involved in they are monitoring a small group of animals and plants, plants that have been selected as indicator species for climate watch and they are the Jacaranda, the Illawarra Flame Tree, The African Tulip Tree, The Silky Oak and the Gymea Lily, a mix of locals and exotics.  They have included plants that can be tracked with other people around the world and also plants that grow in different places around Australia.    At the moment they are concentrating on the east coast from Queensland through NSW and right down to Tasmania and the Jacaranda will grow right through this range.  At the Botanic Gardens what they are thinking of doing this year or next year is to celebrate spring in August to make people aware that there’s something going on in August that’s not being noticed so will have the Spring Festival in the Sydney Botanic Gardens in August.

Plant Table            Presented by Ian

Banksia spinulosa is a plant that varies quite a lot.  It grows to 2m high and bears golden-yellow cylindrical flower spikes to 18cm in autumn to winter that attract birds.  It is native to the east coast of Australia and it is propagated from seed.  Colours range from light yellow to gold.  Ian lives in hope of someday finding a pure white banksia in the bush.

Goodenia ovata - prostrate form.  This is a very hardy ground cover that will grow and flower well in sun or shade and is easy to strike from cutting.

Breynia oblongifolia – Purple leaf form. (Pictured at right) A lot of purple leaf plants if grown in the shade will revert back to green; this one seems to hold its purple form even in the shade.  Grows 2-3m high and is found in rainforest margins.

Trema aspera Ian has found growing in the bush around his place and is finding it coming up everywhere.  It’s a small tree or shrub that grows to around 5m high and bears small flowers followed by fruits that attract birds.  A good rehabilitation plant.

Swainsona sejuncta is a shrub from eastern Australia that grows to about 2m high and bears pea flowers in various colours.  It needs light well-drained soil and should be treated as an annual.  Propagates readily from treated seed.

Melia azedarach var.australasica or white cedar is a deciduous tree that grows to variable heights and bears purple and white flowers in spring followed by yellow berries.  It’s an easy tree to grow but is subject to caterpillar attack which can completely defoliate the tree and parrots are attracted to the fruits.  As the tree ages the grubs get into the stems and the black cockatoos come along and rip the bark to pieces to get at the grubs.  The fruits of the tree are poisonous to humans and stock.

Orthosiphon aristatus or Cat’s Whiskers made a repeat appearance.  It is a perennial that grows to 1m and bears white or mauve flowers with long curving stamens in spring and summer.  It needs a warm sunny spot in the garden and strikes easily from cutting; it will even strike roots in water.  June says that Harry has tried growing it for her but all attempts have failed.

Crowea saligna (pictured at right) is a plant that grows to about 1m high.  It’s long flowering and bears large deep pink wax flowers that are most prolific in summer and winter.  Prefers semi shade but will grow in full morning sun or heavy shade and it is fairly drought tolerant.  Propagated from cutting and makes a good container plant.

Ian mentioned that terrestrial orchids are starting to appear in the bush now particularly the greenhoods and Pterostylis curta will even come up in your lawns so keep an eye out for them.  They’ve all had name changes but Tim said not to worry about remembering the new names because there’s a paper due out stating we should be putting them all back again to what they were.

Pittosporum undulatum can become a pest, it has a beautiful fragrant cream flower that appears in September and is followed by orange berries that the birds love and spread into the bush and all around the district.

Bracteantha ‘Lemon Princess’ grows to about 50cm high and bears lemon daisy flowers over long periods; unfortunately the flower tends to close at night.  In the cut flower trade they drop wax onto the flowers of water lilies to keep them open and maybe that would work with the daisy as well.

Grevillea ‘Golden Lyre’ is a hybrid between G.formosa and G.’Honey Gem’, it has arching branches and bears golden brush flowers for most of the year attracting birds.  It needs a well drained soil and grows well north from Sydney and will not tolerate cold conditions.   Needs to be pruned after flowering otherwise the branches will break with their weight.

There were two grasses on the table - Themeda australis or otherwise known as Kangaroo Grass grows to about 1m high and bears attractive seed heads.  It has a distribution range of all states of Australia and will come up everywhere after fire.   Echinopogon caespitosus or Tufted Hedgehog Grass grows to about 1m high with a bristly seed head (pictured at right) hence its common name.  It can be found in woodland and has a distribution area of NSW coast and ranges, Queensland and New Guinea.

Information sources - Fairley & Moore Native Plants of the Sydney District, Robinsons Field Guide to the Native Plants of Sydney and Wrigley & Fagg Australian Native Plants.

Flora Festival   Thursday 9th – Sunday 12th September

The festival will be held again this year at the same venue as last year and now it’s time to get busy and to think about our display.    As in previous years we will be hoping that many of our members will loan us their container plants so that we can incorporate them into the display.  Some of the plants that look good in containers that should be flowering in the spring would include Boronia, Dampiera, Lechenaultia, Phebalium, Philotheca, Scaevola, Tetratheca, and any of the paper daisies and Brachycomes and there are many more.  Vines can also be trained to grow on a trellis such as Hibbertia dentata, H.scandens, and Hardenbergia violacea and grasses, Lomandras and Dianellas also look good in containers

If you’d like to help get potting up now; several plants in the one container make a good display and these pots should be looking good by September.

The Human Touch

As Ian mentioned terrestrial orchids are starting to appear in the bush I thought I would reprint this article;

an extract from the Mid North Coast Group April/May 2004 Newsletter
which is food for thought for all of us and may affect the way we examine plants in the wild in the future.

Native Munchers 

When we commenced regenerating our old kiwifruit paddock I was disappointed that a fairly high percentage of recently planted trees and shrubs were eaten down by Swamp Wallabies;  some soon after planting and others after a few weeks (or perhaps a couple of months) as they were becoming established.  So we now have to protect virtually every plant that we put in.  We weren’t overly surprised that rainforest species were found to be palatable but didn’t expect that Eucalypts and Wattles were so often eaten right back, mainly Tallowwood Eucalypt microcorys and the local Green Wattle Acacia irrorata.  These two species were also naturally regenerating and these were about the same size as those planted; but none had been browsed.  I was then of the opinion that the only difference between introduced and natural plants was the added fertilisers and minerals which may have been on the foliage.  In view of the following reprinted article (Don’t Leave Your Scent Behind) it seems that the difference could well have been human scent that may have been retained in plants for some weeks, or else had been picked up during watering or weeding during their early establishment.  We had no reason to handle the naturally regenerating specimens as they were growing, doing well enough without our interference.  Perhaps this was a reason for their survival?

Don’t Leave Your Scent Behind

When we come across a terrestrial orchid beside a track, our natural reaction is to kneel down, steady it with our hand and have a closer look.  But …STOP!  According to David Jones at the National Herbarium in Canberra, and other orchidologists, research has shown that those orchids that have been handled by humans are more likely to be eaten by native animals.  Obviously, some animals have very keen noses and delicate appetites and unknowingly, we are leaving our scent behind!  I have learnt the hard way, of course.  Recently I examined an area containing many flowering Mudgee Orchids, and decided I needed to return the next day to take more photos.  Where there had been approximately 20 orchids in flower, all I found were 19 flowerless stems.  One had survived because it was in the middle of a prickly shrub.  I now hold a small twig in my hand and use it to steady terrestrial orchids when I want to admire or examine them more closely.  Perhaps by not touching flowering orchids we may help to prevent the loss of a full season’s seed dispersal.

Margaret B. – Sutherland Shire Bushcare Link

Reprinted from ASGAP Indigenous Orchid Study Group Newsletter, September 2003

Another Fly

There are more than 10,000 species of Australian flies and yet only a handful of those make a nuisance of themselves.  Adult flies are distinguished from other insects as they possess just one set of wings.

The Robber Fly, Diptera: Asilidae, is one of the beneficial flies, they ambush other insects especially the common fly on the wing inject poison into the insect and then secrete enzymes to aid digestion.  The enzymes break down the body tissues into a liquid which the robber fly sucks out leaving just the exoskeleton.

They can be found in open woodland and parks and any garden with trees and flowers that might attract many species of insects for them to feed on.  Their larvae live in the soil and some of these too are predators.

In appearance they resemble a wasp and have been known to bite humans but only by accident or on provocation which also is not unlike the wasp.

Information source Backyard Insects by Paul Horne & Denis Crawford & A Field Guide to Insects in Australia by Paul Aborowski and Ross Storey.

Wildplants Nursery Official Opening

The opening of the Wildplants Nursery at Pioneer Dairy took place on Saturday 17^th April.  The opening was well supported by community groups and official guests included Wyong Mayor Bob Graham and local Federal Member for Dobell Craig Thomson who cut the ribbon (actually it was string) across the gate.

Guests on the day enjoyed morning tea and were given a tour of the nursery.

Fungi Corner

This specimen Cyptotrama asprata was seen in Strickland Forest growing on decomposing wood during our April bushwalk.  It has a wide distribution area and is found in tropical regions around the world.

The caps are bright orange and young specimens are covered with spikes which break up with age. 

The flesh is white or pale yellow and the spore print white.  It is not known whether it is edible.

  Information source

A field guide to Australian Fungi by Bruce Fuhrer & Wikipedia.org

Fungi Dates For Your Diary

Bushcare Training Calendar

  Bookings are essential.  Contact Bushcare Officers on 4304 4557 or 4304 4564.

 April Bushwalk Report

Perfect weather and good company was enjoyed by those who took part in the Strickland State Forest bushwalk on Sunday 11 April.  On the stroll down to the creek we saw many interesting rainforest plants and a few people discarded pesky leeches.  Some of the flowering plants by the track were Correa reflexa – green form, Synoum glandulosum – the scented Rosewood, Breynia oblongifolia – Dwarf’s Apples, Rubus Moluccanus var trilobus – native Raspberry, several grasses and ferns.  The fungi folk were not disappointed either with yellow, orange & brown specimens.

The road into the Banksia picnic area sported 3 different species of Styphellia –S.laetea var latifolia (green flowers), S.tubiflora (red flowers) and the surprise plant with pinky green flowers was S.triflora.    Banksia ericifolia, Acacia terminalis, A.ulicifolius & A.suaveolens and at least two very early flowering Grevillea buxifolia were also on the road into the picnic area.

We missed you Diana … see you next month!

Barbara

.

When:     Sunday 16th May, 2010

Where:  Moonee Beach track, Munmorah SCA

Meet: 10.00 at the entrance booth to Munmorah State Recreation Area.

Directions: From Gosford, travel north through The Entrance and Norah Head onto Budgewoi Rd, and thence into Elizabeth Bay Drive via Ourringo Rd. After some distance, turn Right at a roundabout into Birdie Beach Rd.

If travelling north on the Freeway, take the Doyalson exit, and several km past Doyalson intersection turn right into Elizabeth Bay Dr. (at traffic lights), and then left at the roundabout into Birdie Beach Rd.

Fees may apply at the entrance booth, or a N.P. pass.

Description:

After meeting, we will proceed into the park to Snapper Point Rd, and park near the track to Moonee Beach. This track leads through dense windswept heathland on the exposed headland, where there are patches of rare Eucalyptus capitellata, and many low and spiky plants of the pink-flowered Hakea bakeriana. Banksia aemula, the Wallum Banksia, as well as B.integrifolia,  B. oblongifolia and B. spinulosa are all in low dwarfed form here.

Bring a pack with lunch to eat on the walk. It can be windy or quite hot on this headland, and the return is uphill, so plenty of water and a hat are advisable. (The nearest toilets are those at Frazer Beach.)

Afterwards we may make a visit to Snapper Point, with cliff edge views of the sea cave, an historic site of gravel mining.

For further information, you can ring Diana before 9 am on the day, or Elsie  after 9.30am.

CD - Native Plants & Bushwalks of the Central Coast

Many years ago Alan created a list of plants that the group had identified while on their monthly bushwalks.   This list was passed over to Diana & Barry a few years ago and it was then converted into a data base.   Over the past 3 years a great many more plants have been added to the list and now 800 plants are included on the data base.

Photographs were also collected along the way some taken by Diana & Barry and others taken by some of the keen photographers amongst the group members.

From this data base and collection of photos a DVD was produced to run on the coach for the Sydney Tour of the ASGAP Conference last year.   This particular tour was subsequently cancelled due to lack of numbers but a seed was planted and the thought of a CD began to grow.

After many hours spent at the computer the CD is now complete.   It contains over 400 photographs and lists 24 bushwalks in National Parks, State Forests and Reserves of the Central Coast region and each bushwalk has a listing of the plants which may be found along that walk.   In some cases maps are included.

The disc is available for $15 plus $2.50 postage (within Australia only)  The CD  can be purchased at any of our monthly meetings.

or if you wish to order a form is available from this  website.

• To view details and samples from the CD

• or to download an order form

• Go directly to the New CD site by clicking on  the CD Case on the right.

The Committee and members would like to thank Diana and Barry for all the effort and hours spent in producing the CD the profits from the sale of which will benefit the group.