Botany Nerds Ahoy
Think I’ll put some more bunyas in too. Don’t have to do anything with them here. Soil (shitty) and light is just right. I was in Bunnings Mdore yesterday looking at grevilleas and they had Wollemi. The hoops and bunyas were bought at Pomona landcare nursery. They have some good local stuff there.
GreenJam wrote:good on you and good luck seeds. I agree that with a sheltered wetter 'gully type' position it could do ok in our region. Seeing your pic, I'd be concerned about the competitive effect of the bamboo. Did you have to dig through bamboo roots to get that wollemi in the ground? I'd be surprised if not - they spread out their surface roots quite a way and have a substantial drying effect on the surrounding region. I'd think that would extend to the area of your wollemi planting. But I may be wrong? These wollemis do also have a track record of dying (part of the reason the QLD government put an end to its mass propagation and distribution program some years back). But I wish you all the best with your wollemi.
and tubeshooter - yes, do be careful, they will inflict infections. I've found particularly any dead branches, the thorns on them seem the worst, maybe they've accumulated some extra pathogens being dead/dry?
and thanks AW. Confirms my thoughts.
sorry I dont do the photos on here, but my latest 'botany nerd' report is the maccas are once again dripping with flowers. Look and smell amazing, and I'm seeing some good pollination/nut set happening so I am excited, although al the pest battles are yet to come.....
Greenjam. Hi mate. I can smell the Macadamia flowers from down here. Grand trees when they are big. I hope you get a good yield and find some natural combatant to keep your undesirable invertebrates away.
PLANT TRIVIA
The genus Macadamia was named in honour of John McAdam, a Pom.
Ferdinand von Mueller (of Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne, fame) bestowed it upon him for his great work with science and philosophy.. AW
thanks seeds. I'd like to try again with a Wollemi, but keep it in a pot on the deck, add to my ode to the native pines (sorry AW, I know you mentioned some technically arent pines).
and yes, the Noosa Landcare set up is good. That Hinterhub nursery and shop has good plants and some cool local arty/crafty stuff. Good for quirky gift hunting
thanks AW - yes, the 'bugs for bugs' prep is underway, and I'll be ramping up my rat control this year for sure. No dodgy baits (I see the Rat X is a good option), and a variety of traps.
AlfredWallace wrote:seeds wrote:Time to find out.
Seeds Hi. Greenjam Hi.
Seeds,You’ve a shitload of bamboo, nice, as Greenjam stated their rhizomatous roots travel ten of metres, competition for nutrients and water will be interesting.
I’d imagine keeping all night and day herbivores off your new baby would be paramount, may even have to cover over the top of your tree guard until it shows signs of extension growth which is normally commensurate with root growth. Great choice, do read that short book if you have time, insightful to say the least.
Nurture, nature. AW
Hi AW it’s scrub turkey nesting season here hence the barrier. No male around this year so looking good. There is one female still so it’ll be something new to scratch at. Then there is Bruce the bastard. My orange tree (only) he loved. He roots elsewhere but respites in our yard. Big papa of the local mob.
GreenJam wrote:thanks seeds. I'd like to try again with a Wollemi, but keep it in a pot on the deck, add to my ode to the native pines (sorry AW, I know you mentioned some technically arent pines).
and yes, the Noosa Landcare set up is good. That Hinterhub nursery and shop has good plants and some cool local arty/crafty stuff. Good for quirky gift hunting
Greenjam. Sounds like your local indigenous nurseries in your area are good.
Love hearing people wanting to plant relictual type plants, Bunyas, Hoops, Kauri, Wollemi .Between you and Seeds, you’ll create a bit of a Jurassic/Triassic park before you know it. Great work. AW
seeds wrote:AlfredWallace wrote:seeds wrote:Time to find out.
Seeds Hi. Greenjam Hi.
Seeds,You’ve a shitload of bamboo, nice, as Greenjam stated their rhizomatous roots travel ten of metres, competition for nutrients and water will be interesting.
I’d imagine keeping all night and day herbivores off your new baby would be paramount, may even have to cover over the top of your tree guard until it shows signs of extension growth which is normally commensurate with root growth. Great choice, do read that short book if you have time, insightful to say the least.
Nurture, nature. AWHi AW it’s scrub turkey nesting season here hence the barrier. No male around this year so looking good. There is one female still so it’ll be something new to scratch at. Then there is Bruce the bastard. My orange tree (only) he loved. He roots elsewhere but respites in our yard. Big papa of the local mob.
Seeds. Hi. You’ve got your own little bio zone at yours, great plants, birds and macropods.
I’d love Brush Turkeys in my yard, you can tell I’m a southerner, most northerners probably don’t want them.
Are the turkeys pests or just highly adaptable and successful at exploiting niches. Im thinking the latter.
Bruce is a very naughty boy!!!. No wonder he pauses in your backyard, carry around a set of nuts and a pecker as big as his, well, I’m blushing and feeling very underwhelmed and undersized.
In reality, it must be nice to have myriad kangaroos and wallabies and other animals, we are very lucky in Oz, many countries I’ve visited are very devoid of what we take for granted.
Keep us informed regarding your new plantings performance. All the best. AW
What’s going on in this last photo ?
Breeding?
Some sort of Agave?
It's actually a native Doryanthes excelsa native to NSW
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doryanthes_excelsa
Good question on what's going on in the odd one out, I dont recall seeing one flower like that, do they have male and female plants?
Thanks Indo. We have a lily here that you can’t kill. Has a white flower. What are they doing though? I don’t know.
Yeah i dont know what that last plant pic is doing, im sure AW will though
indo-dreaming wrote:It's actually a native Doryanthes excelsa native to NSW
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doryanthes_excelsa
Good question on what's going on in the odd one out, I dont recall seeing one flower like that, do they have male and female plants?
Indo .Hi. How are you?
Correct with your good eye. Gymea Lily, Natuve to Northern NSW and South east Qld. They are xeropyhytes, tolerating long periods of dry.
The tall inflorescence with the globular flower head is Doryanthes excelsa. The flower grows very tall up to 15m. Its foliage is not as robust as the only other species in the Doryanthaceae family, Doryanthes palmeri.
Doryanthes palmeri has an overall larger basal area and is a broader clumping type plant.
Its inflorescence is a raceme of lots of flowers and always arching.
I’ve grown both sexually and asexually with great success.
A great plant to attract birds, especially honeyeaters.
The last photo has both species growing together, looks like when the mass planting occurred quite awhile ago that a couple of D.excelsa got mixed in with the lot. AW
seeds wrote:Thanks Indo. We have a lily here that you can’t kill. Has a white flower. What are they doing though? I don’t know.
Seeds. A photo please. Could be Hymenocallis sp. or Crinum sp.AW
Arum lily?
udo wrote:https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2023-09-20/medicinal-gum-trees-grown-i...
Udo. Thanks for the article.
Those results are not surprising, plant world has everything, from the very earliest forms of life cyanobacteria in NW West Oz to the tallest angiosperm on the planet. Eucalyptus regnans -Mountain Ash and everything in between.AW
@AW , how’s it going mate . I know very little about plants and birds but at work I’m surrounded by them . I work on a 36 hole golf course which is on the tweed river and is also a nature reserve . There’s wildlife in abundance here , especially this time of the year with migrating birds and reptiles waking up . About 4 days ago I spotted at least 10 yellow tail black cockatoo’s , we sometimes get the red ones too . I’ve heard the old myth about seeing them and you count how many and then that many days later you get rain . We could sure use some at the moment, areas on the course where the irrigation doesn’t reach are very dry . Anyway this morning while doing the bunkers this guy was hanging around but wouldn’t let me get closer than 40 meters so the photos aren’t very good as I was zooming in with iPhone . Just wondering what type of bird this is ? I wasn’t quick enough to snap the cockies the other day. 
Sorry about quality of photos , they don’t do the bird’s colours justice.
AlfredWallace wrote:indo-dreaming wrote:It's actually a native Doryanthes excelsa native to NSW
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doryanthes_excelsa
Good question on what's going on in the odd one out, I dont recall seeing one flower like that, do they have male and female plants?
Indo .Hi. How are you?
Correct with your good eye. Gymea Lily, Natuve to Northern NSW and South east Qld. They are xeropyhytes, tolerating long periods of dry.
The tall inflorescence with the globular flower head is Doryanthes excelsa. The flower grows very tall up to 15m. Its foliage is not as robust as the only other species in the Doryanthaceae family, Doryanthes palmeri.
Doryanthes palmeri has an overall larger basal area and is a broader clumping type plant.
Its inflorescence is a raceme of lots of flowers and always arching.
I’ve grown both sexually and asexually with great success.
A great plant to attract birds, especially honeyeaters.The last photo has both species growing together, looks like when the mass planting occurred quite awhile ago that a couple of D.excelsa got mixed in with the lot. AW
Okay cheers, that makes sense then.
First pic is in my yard. Not flowering this time of year. I think it’s these. Pretty common. I was recently in Lombok and I saw them there in flower. Wonder if same?
[quote=Supafreak Just wondering what type of bird this is ? I wasn’t quick enough to snap the cockies the other day. Sorry about quality of photos , they don’t do the bird’s colours justice.
Hey Supa,
Did it have 2 long tail feathers?
It looks a bit like a rainbow bee eater.
Maybe a white-throated bee eater Supa?
Looks like a rainbow bee eater to me.
They make burrows in sand for nests.
seeds wrote:First pic is in my yard. Not flowering this time of year. I think it’s these. Pretty common. I was recently in Lombok and I saw them there in flower. Wonder if same?
Seeds. I think you’ve got it. Crinum, good work.AW
Hey Seaslug just googling Arum lilies. Pretty but declared weed!
freeride76 wrote:Looks like a rainbow bee eater to me.
They make burrows in sand for nests.
Freeride76. Spot on,.
Rainbow Bee-Eater (Merops ornatus) a beautifully coloured bird, paired generally but are often very colonial in many geographical locations in Oz.
On a road trip from down here to Cairns back in April, i free-camped off the side of the highway near Guthalungra north of Bowen in amongst some Pandanus and Melaleuca in an old dry creek bed. At dawn next morning i counted 54 birds in a large Melaleuca tree facing into the east morning sun, such a delight.
They don’t just eat bees. They love large meaty invertebrates. Also generally found near freshwater no matter how small a body it is.
I saw one at Yorkeys Knob beach amongst Beach She-Oak trees (Casuarina equisetifolia) just north of Cairns last trip, it had a Cairns Birdwing (Ornithoptera euphorion ) butterfly in its gob.
This is the only species of bee-eater in Australia.
Africa, Europe ,Asia, PNG and along the tropics is home to other species. AW
Lots of them around here at the moment.
They have a distinctive call- it's a delightful sound.
Got some Botany questions for you AW, will post up tonight.
freeride76 wrote:Lots of them around here at the moment.
They have a distinctive call- it's a delightful sound.
Got some Botany questions for you AW, will post up tonight.
FR76. Hope you are well.
Not wrong. It’s a quick melodious pripp, pip, pripp, very distinctive .
Once you hear the call you never forget it, true, it’s delightful for sure.
Ooh, exciting, I’ll await in anticipation. AW
Supafreak wrote:@AW , how’s it going mate . I know very little about plants and birds but at work I’m surrounded by them . I work on a 36 hole golf course which is on the tweed river and is also a nature reserve . There’s wildlife in abundance here , especially this time of the year with migrating birds and reptiles waking up . About 4 days ago I spotted at least 10 yellow tail black cockatoo’s , we sometimes get the red ones too . I’ve heard the old myth about seeing them and you count how many and then that many days later you get rain . We could sure use some at the moment, areas on the course where the irrigation doesn’t reach are very dry . Anyway this morning while doing the bunkers this guy was hanging around but wouldn’t let me get closer than 40 meters so the photos aren’t very good as I was zooming in with iPhone . Just wondering what type of bird this is ? I wasn’t quick enough to snap the cockies the other day.
Supafreak. Hi mate. I’m well, hope it’s reciprocal.
Can i get a job at yours, sounds great where you work.
Im very excited by your post. Firstly, because you showed us the Rainbow Bee-Eater , secondly you are now our golf course wildlife ‘go to man’.
Photos please when you can of anything that catches your eye.
FR76 eluded to it earlier. One of the bird’s favourite places to nest is in sand when available, not so much on the horizontal plane but more so like a profiled cutting as in on the edge of a bunker or similar. They are probably also there because of access to water, ive seen them drinking at dripping taps and sprinklers.
The most defining feature thats probably attracting them is food.
The animal world including birds, lives are determined by mostly access to food.
I’d imagine the golf course has a lot of large trees bordering the course and fairways. Eucalyptus sp, Melaleuca sp. other sub-tropical trees, many or some coming into or are already in flower.
Photos of trees, plants, birds, butterflies, anything, us nerds of this thread want it all.
Well, i do. All the best.AW
seeds wrote:First pic is in my yard. Not flowering this time of year. I think it’s these. Pretty common. I was recently in Lombok and I saw them there in flower. Wonder if same?
Seeds. Hi. Hope you are well.
Not to be confused with Hymenocallis littoralis. Beach Spider Lily
Always a process of cross-checking and elimination with plant identification . AW
@AW Ok thanks for replying , are they native ? We had a bunker with a series of holes on the face where they nested years ago . We didn’t touch the face of that bunker for years but finally the day came when we had to top up all the bunkers with sand . I’ve only seen them around this time of year and was why I thought it was on a migration run . He /she was constantly checking out the bunker wall then flying back to a tree whenever I got too close . We have about 10 dams with treated water as our irrigation supply . Heaps of raptors and huge resident monitor lizard that just doesn’t give a fark about humans and walks around like he owns the joint . Haven’t seen him for a few years as I was elsewhere but if I spot him I will post for sure , he’s over 2 meters .
Supafreak wrote:@AW Ok thanks for replying , are they native ? We had a bunker with a series of holes on the face where they nested years ago . We didn’t touch the face of that bunker for years but finally the day came when we had to top up all the bunkers with sand . I’ve only seen them around this time of year and was why I thought it was on a migration run . He /she was constantly checking out the bunker wall then flying back to a tree whenever I got too close . We have about 10 dams with treated water as our irrigation supply . Heaps of raptors and huge resident monitor lizard that just doesn’t give a fark about humans and walks around like he owns the joint . Haven’t seen him for a few years as I was elsewhere but if I spot him I will post for sure , he’s over 2 meters .
Supafreak. Yes, our species Merops ornatus - Rainbow Bee Eater is our only native bee eater.
The birds up north move around but don’t venture down here (Vic) mid Autumn to Winter, they return here mid Spring.
Up your way, they are omnipresent but do move around regarding food sources/nesting and often head to warner geographic locations in the Northern oz winter, many go inland, not too far , simply looking for warmth/food. Bee Eaters are birds that like warm weather, globally. AW
Supafreak wrote:@AW Ok thanks for replying , are they native ? We had a bunker with a series of holes on the face where they nested years ago . We didn’t touch the face of that bunker for years but finally the day came when we had to top up all the bunkers with sand . I’ve only seen them around this time of year and was why I thought it was on a migration run . He /she was constantly checking out the bunker wall then flying back to a tree whenever I got too close . We have about 10 dams with treated water as our irrigation supply . Heaps of raptors and huge resident monitor lizard that just doesn’t give a fark about humans and walks around like he owns the joint . Haven’t seen him for a few years as I was elsewhere but if I spot him I will post for sure , he’s over 2 meters .
Edit……….sorry I just saw everyone else’s reply’s
AlfredWallace wrote:seeds wrote:First pic is in my yard. Not flowering this time of year. I think it’s these. Pretty common. I was recently in Lombok and I saw them there in flower. Wonder if same?
Seeds. Hi. Hope you are well.
Not to be confused with Hymenocallis littoralis. Beach Spider Lily
Always a process of cross-checking and elimination with plant identification . AW
Yeah i dont recall seeing our native Crinum's in Bali but do recall seeing Hymenocallis littoralis. Beach Spider Lily a fair bit.
In Bali they do have a different large Crinum species though with an almost purple leaf and pink flowers.
This one
https://plants.rogersgardens.com/12290002/Plant/30109/Red_Giant_Crinum_L...
indo-dreaming wrote:AlfredWallace wrote:seeds wrote:First pic is in my yard. Not flowering this time of year. I think it’s these. Pretty common. I was recently in Lombok and I saw them there in flower. Wonder if same?
Seeds. Hi. Hope you are well.
Not to be confused with Hymenocallis littoralis. Beach Spider Lily
Always a process of cross-checking and elimination with plant identification . AW
Yeah i dont recall seeing our native Crinum's in Bali but do recall seeing Hymenocallis littoralis. Beach Spider Lily a fair bit.
In Bali they do have a different large Crinum species though with an almost purple leaf and pink flowers.
This one
https://plants.rogersgardens.com/12290002/Plant/30109/Red_Giant_Crinum_L...
Seeds. Hi mate. How’s things ? I’m back on our thread, exhausting over on that toxic thread.
In Victoria up around the Murray River we have a Crinum sp.
In fact Australia has 5 species, mostly pan sub and tropical plants.
I’m very fond of Hymenocallis littoralis. Love plants that offer more than just a flower, useful foliage in any temperate or sub-tropical/tropical landscape. By the way I think your evolving garden is going to look the goods .AW
indo-dreaming wrote:AlfredWallace wrote:seeds wrote:First pic is in my yard. Not flowering this time of year. I think it’s these. Pretty common. I was recently in Lombok and I saw them there in flower. Wonder if same?
Seeds. Hi. Hope you are well.
Not to be confused with Hymenocallis littoralis. Beach Spider Lily
Always a process of cross-checking and elimination with plant identification . AW
Yeah i dont recall seeing our native Crinum's in Bali but do recall seeing Hymenocallis littoralis. Beach Spider Lily a fair bit.
In Bali they do have a different large Crinum species though with an almost purple leaf and pink flowers.
This one
https://plants.rogersgardens.com/12290002/Plant/30109/Red_Giant_Crinum_L...
Indo. Hi. Thanks for the photo of that large Crinum sp in Bali, nice colour mix. The only other Crinum I’ve seen since Hort. College days is Crinum moorei which is a South African native, pale pink and white flowers.
The one here in Victoria is Crinum flaccidum it has big white flowers.
All members of the Amaryllidaceae family. Consuming any part, especially the bulbous basal region and seeds can lead to death.AW
Cheers guys.
Hey Seeds, yes absolute pest, very very invasive
@AW , our orchid is doing its yearly flowering, what type is it ? 
Supafreak wrote:@AW , our orchid is doing its yearly flowering, what type is it ?
Supafreak. Hi. Hope you are well.
Orchid identification down to ‘species’ level is not one of my strengths.
Epiphytic Orchid for sure. I need to discern whether it’s native or introduced.
Looks like a Dendrobium species.
The Orchid family is the second largest flowering plant family on earth containing around 900 different genera with about 25,000 species. It’s massive.
(Asteraceae family - the Daisies is the largest)
I’ll get onto it, see how i go.
I also see in your garden a leggy Mexican native, Poinsettia (Euphorbia pulcherrima) with its large red bracts (not flowers, the flowers are a tiny little yellow/green colour in amongst the bracts).
You also have Catharanthus rosea - Periwinkle, native to Madagascar (little pink and burgundy flowers)
The small tree (with the attached epiphytic orchid) and beautifully smooth and coloured bark. What is it, all i can see is the trunk ?
It looks like the bark of Tristaniopsis laurina - Kanooka, Water Gum. AW
AW and Supafreak - my guess for the tree with the orchid attached would be a Leopard tree (Caesalpinea ferrea)? I quite like them.
GreenJam wrote:AW and Supafreak - my guess for the tree with the orchid attached would be a Leopard tree (Caesalpinea ferrea)? I quite like them.
Greenjam. Hi mate. Hope you are well. Thanks
If it is, which it does look like to me, I see its had a name change
Libidibia ferrea a Brazilian native. Fabaceae family.
The wood products and uses look awesome. AW
yeah AW, I just picked up on the name change. Another one...
all good here, thanks. Bought a Richmond Birdwing Vine yesterday to try to infill a large trellis recently installed. A wallaby took a liking to the Tecomanthe (Fraser Is creeper) I'd recently planted - it gave it a good prune back just when it had started to take off, damn, but hopefully it will recover and thrive (now that it's got some extra wire around it). And will have the first batch of parasitic wasps (Anastatus) arriving on Tuesday as the biological control for the Fruit Spotting Bug in the maccas. Expecting they'll seek out any FSB eggs and stop them from establishing in large numbers this season. We'll see..
GreenJam wrote:yeah AW, I just picked up on the name change. Another one...
all good here, thanks. Bought a Richmond Birdwing Vine yesterday to try to infill a large trellis recently installed. A wallaby took a liking to the Tecomanthe (Fraser Is creeper) I'd recently planted - it gave it a good prune back just when it had started to take off, damn, but hopefully it will recover and thrive (now that it's got some extra wire around it). And will have the first batch of parasitic wasps (Anastatus) arriving on Tuesday as the biological control for the Fruit Spotting Bug in the maccas. Expecting they'll seek out any FSB eggs and stop them from establishing in large numbers this season. We'll see..
GJ. I remember you mentioning previously about the Tecomanthe hillii looks and sounds like a great fast growing climber/creeper.
You humoured me recently when you mentioned non FNP folk on K,gari with their obsession with clipping everything, does my head in, plants under restraint and constraints , clipping everything so it looks ‘tidy’.
What is this obsession with tidiness, another European hangover, its evolved from the ‘park’, ‘estate’ type mentality .
Your place should look good with your new plantings, as long as you can keep macropods and other vegetative munchers at bay, best wishes for success with your Macadamias this season.
Better get back to my orchid problem.AW
@AW , thanks for replying, I appreciate your wealth of knowledge as I know SFA . @greenjam the tree has really tiny leaves and constantly drops them , makes a mess of the car if I park it there but yeah a nice looking tree .
I love reading this thread and all the knowledge out there, thanks guys
Supafreak wrote:@AW , thanks for replying, I appreciate your wealth of knowledge as I know SFA . @greenjam the tree has really tiny leaves and constantly drops them , makes a mess of the car if I park it there but yeah a nice looking tree .
Supafreak. Your epiphytic or lithophytic orchid, my professional opinion is that it’s not a native orchid at all.
Albeit, we do have many species of Dendrobium in Oz.
I think it’s a form of Dendrobium nobile which have variegated coloured flowers, most likely a cultivar (horticultural language for a cultivated variety) from sub continent Asia to S.E Asian countries like, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, even southern China.
Hundreds of different colour mixes as well deliberately cross-bred cultivars exist globally. AW
Here is something that certainly stops you in your tracks, well, it did yesterday, i almost stood on it, then it lunged at me and just missed my leg. Estimated 2m in length.
Eastern Brown Snake (Pseudonaja textilis ) 2nd deadliest snake on earth.
Stayed with it awhile, always fascinated, in front of my eyes, all along its length it reduced its girth to a flat pan mode and squeezed through the narrowest of cracks in the concrete bridge that spans over a small riparian waterway which abounds with numerous frog species.
Bit of a snake week here, Monday my attention was drawn to my gravel driveway as i could see 2 Red Wattlebirds dropping in and out of the Eucalyptus trees, bombing something on the ground, a casual Tiger Snake (Notechis scutatus ) made its way into my front native garden, chuffed, good sign of a healthy ecosystem.
Gotta love nature. AW
Does anyone know about epiphytic weeds on north coast rainforest trees? Some of my hard quandong trees (Elaeocarpus obovatus) have a weed growing on them with leaves similar to the host, except the leaves are thicker and glossier. I just noticed these weeds today because they have a red flower, which the hard quandong does not have.
Snakes, now frogs.
Here’s three species of frogs all found under a small piece of corrugated iron in a national park near here.
Spotted Grass Frog. (Limnodynastes tasmaniensis)
Banjo Frog (Limnodynastes dumerilii)
Ewing’s Southern Tree Frog. (Litoria ewingii) This is its brown morph colour, also comes in a green morph. Croak,croak,croak.AW
Seems a keen interest for some, so why not.