Cats claw

Five of our members turned up for the working bee last week, plus Steve Plant and his offsider Aaron.
Welcome to our newest member Joan Kirton. She and Euan McLean did some fruitful work on the cats claw in the corner. It is running downhill across the ground, and finding more trees to climb. Euan explained to Joan about the "Bradfield Method" (which consists of containing weeds by pushing back the frontiers rather than attacking the heartland). It was a very appropriate method, as cats claw runners were covering considerable distance, but hadn't actually put down many roots yet, so they recovered quite a bit of territory. I also had a go at the "heartland", getting it down from the trees to prevent it from flowering.
Graham and Judy Stevens found quite a few large asparagus roots. I couldn't find many, so had the satisfaction of knowing that we are definitely keeping the larger plants down.
Trish

February working bee

Hullo to all Franke Scrubbers, and a happy new year to you!
Our first working bee is due next week, Wednesday 23rd February. We expect to have one on the last Wednesday of every month from now until November, so now's the time to go through and make ten little notes on your 2011 calendar!
It will be at 9.00 as usual, with a break at 10.30 for morning tea and a chat.
I haven't been out there since before Christmas, so don't know what the tasks are - but expect that everything will have grown well with the rain.
We can expect some pleasant surprises from the native plants, birds, butterflies, and so on, and perhaps a larger quantity of weeds than we would like. As usual, our priority will be the prevention of seed production.
Bring:
* digging and cutting tools, and gardening gloves if you use them
* something to put rubbish into
* practical clothing including protection from sun and the possibility of ticks
* morning tea and a chair
* camera if you think you might use it
I look forward to seeing you all there - together with any new scrubbers whom you can persuade to join our happy group.
Trish

Summer in Franke Scrub

Another species to add to the list, Bar-shouldered Dove. It was sitting in a thicket of vine on the eastern side of the scrub calling forlornly. The only bird that answered was the resident Spotted Dove. I now make the bird list 51 species of which 41 have been recorded in Franke Scrub, and 10 more species recorded on the road reserve, adjacent areas or flying overhead.

As usual butterflies were everywhere, mainly Orchard Swallowtail, Black Jezabel and Caper White though there were a couple of other Whites flying around that I didn’t identify although I think one was the Chalk (or Striated Pearl) White.

The Flying Foxes are still there, although I only saw three, hanging in the same tree as last month.

Cheers, Lesley

P.S. Can either of you tell me what the large, high canopy tree is that is flowering in the centre of the scrub at the moment? Birds don't seem to be too attracted to it though the Scarlet Honeyeater was calling from the high branches.

Excitement in the Scrub

We felt a great sense of achievement at the last working bee, when we discovered a plant we hadn’t seen before.
Fawcett’s Clematis
Clematis fawcettii




This little plant is listed both nationally and in Queensland as “vulnerable”.









It grows in dry rainforest environments like Franke scrub, usually on stream banks, and has become very difficult to find, in the district. Threats to the plant, nationally, are destruction of the habitat by clearing, fire, and grazing.
We all appreciated the importance of saving Franke Scrub because it is a threatened environment type. While it contains some other species which are uncommon in the district, it was the whole environment which we knew needed to be saved from destruction, simply because preserved patches like this often turn out to be the home of rarer species than we knew. And so it has turned out to be!
We found a number of small plants growing in a group. There must have been seeds surviving in the soil all through the long drought, as all but one of the plants are very small. None were flowering. It will be interesting to see, when flowers do appear, whether we have both male and female plants. We can hope for it, as both are needed for seed production.

More rain

What a wet season we are having. We decided not to churn up the road in September and had a bit of a chat at the intersection of Franke Road instead. It will be interesting to see the growth in the scrub after all this rain.
Hopefully we have got all the big asparagus ferns in the canopy and there will be limited flowering and seed set this year.
We will however be busy dealing with the young plants before they climb into the canopy.
The nice thing about this work, apart from the sounds of birds and the company over smoko, is that we see all the small plants that are now growing since we have cleared up the scrub.

August meeting

The rain should be cleared away for our monthly meeting at Franke Scrub this week. After our very successful information stand at Peacehaven Botanic Garden on National Tree Day we hope to see some new faces. Bring smoko, chair, camera, secateurs, chipping tool and weed bag if you are so inclined. We look forward to seeing you on Wednesday morning 25th August.

National Tree Day at Peacehaven

We were lucky with the weather for our display at Peacehaven. It turned out to be a pleasant sunny morning with good crowds who found our display interesting, so we probably achieved our purpose of letting people in the Highfields area know more about their remnant vegetation and also of our existence.


It was nice to see young people interested in using local plants in their gardens.
Personally I am finding these plants, which I have obtained from the Crows Nest Council nursery and some friends, to be quite fascinating in my new garden. They are growing very well despite the difficult conditions in the past few years.