Peacehaven Botanic Park

We work closely with Peacehaven Botanic Park which is just up the hill from us.
Many of us are friends of both.
Franke Scrub shows our local vegetation in its natural state while Peacehaven is a collection of labelled plants arranged to inform us as well as being a pleasant park to visit.
Peacehaven has a small nursery where local native plants are available at modest prices. It is open Thursday and Saturday mornings.
Peacehaven now has a blog site friendsofpeacehaven.blogspot.com which features the native plumbago found in our scrub.

Never mind the weather

Whatever the weather - and it wasn't bad this morning - it is always nice under the canopy in our scrub. Five of us were out working this morning.
We found a Parsonsia leichhardtii in flower.

[click on the photo to see the flower in detail.]
When you are visiting, have a look at the corky bark on the vine.
The Silver Croton is also in bud and, above us while we had smoko, we found the Scrub Wilga in flower.

Down in the creek the native plumbago is doing well.

Have you had a look at the Mistletoes on the Flindersia on the NW corner?

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.

April gathering

Our fifth Wednesday in April commenced with Trish being interviewed about our activities at Franke Scrub on local ABC radio at 6.45 am. As a result we got some new people at 9 am. If this was not enough excitement, in rolled a mini-bus of Greening Australia workers but they were only there for a look, being occupied in Charles and Motee Rogers Park in Highfields.

It was very dry in the scrub, but looking quite good. We continued the remove asparagus vine and also some Cat's Claw creeper and were caught on camera by the local WIN TV and were on the news that night.

After smoko, we had a stroll through with Steve noticing these plants among many -
Caper white butterflies on the Capparis sarmentosa on the northern roadside
Plumbago zeylanica in flower on the ground at the lower end.
Oily hand lotion from the fruits of Pittosporum viscidum. The finches also love nesting in it.
Streblus sandpaper leaves. There was also a large leaf seedling down in the creek area.
Little galled fruits on the Ruby saltbush Enchylaena tomentosa
Cassinia laevis with mistletoe at upper end of the scrub.
A Beetroot tree Elattostachys xylocarpa with lovely bunches of opening capsules.
Breynia oblongifolia – in a different environment to Ravensbourne, where it is common.
Spartothamnella juncea with orange berries.

Listed and now found

At our last gathering in January Plumbago zeylanica or Native plumbago was located.
Although it is on our plant list, we had not found it since we started our group. It is probably easier to find when it is in flower in January.