Planting Plumbagos

We had a good day today. We are still finding asparagus vine in the canopy and removing some large ones, but in most areas we have made a real difference to the canopy and are finding an interesting range of young plants coming away.

Pic 1: Alison Balke and Toowoomba Regional Council Bushcare officer Steve Plant study a mutant asparagus fern removed during the July working bee at Franke Scrub at Cawdor.

Pic 2: Friends of Franke Scrub members Rosalie Eustace (left) and Sally Steel plant native plumbago seedlings from Crows Nest Nursery at the Franke Scrub reclamation project at Cawdor. These plants were grown from seed collected at Franke Scrub.
Thank you Gary Alcorn for these photos.

July working bee reminder

July is almost over and our regular working bee will be held next week on Wednesday 29th July.
Despite wet weather on the preceding day in June, our last meeting turned out to be delightful weather in the scrub. It was sunny and quite sheltered.
The asparagus vine continues to grow so there is still plenty of work to do, in fact we are still finding some large vines which we must eliminate before spring.

At the working bee

There were several plants of interest in Franke Scrub last week.
The hairy boonaree, Alectryon pubescens, was putting out a few of its showy fruits. This is not a common plant in this district, and one of the things which makes Franke Scrub special. It resembles the closely related common scrub boonaree, but has larger leaves and fruits.

The key distinguishing factor is the hairiness of the capsule. Here you can see how it has been burst open by the swelling of the red “cockscomb” aril.

This muttonwood (Rapanea variabilis) is covered with buds, which will take months to ripen into brownish flowers, then be followed by pretty purple-blue fruits - all clinging to the branchlet in the distinctive muttonwood way.

One of the scrub wilgas (Geijera salicifolia) was putting out a few flowers, too. We’ll see more of these over the next few months.
Lots of little birds are to be seen in the scrub at the moment, attracted by the pools of water down in the creek. They will appreciate the food provided by the wilgas, whose fragrant flowers attract little insects.
Trish Gardner