Pretty Pink Darling Peas

We have two local Darling Peas which are easy to mistake for each other. Both are very pretty and easy-to-grow garden plants, and both have the typical Swainsonia seedpods, which begin green, and develop a pretty pink blush on their sunny sides. The mature pods make good little boats to amuse children, if weighted with a tiny pebble below the waterline. Ankle-biters with plenty of puff can have boat-races by blowing them across puddles.


Swainsona galegifolia
This is a multi-stemmed sub-shrub , with a clump of stems growing from a single crown.
(See photos above and below)


A well-grown plant can have several dozen stems, about waist-high, and branching. Each stem lasts a few years, but the plant is constantly being renewed by new stems, and has a few flowers for much of the year. Tidy gardeners will cut off the old ones each season.
This drought-hardy plant is found on the edges of local rainforests, and grows particularly well in red soil.



Swainsona queenslandica
This one spreads by underground rhizomes, and is the plant we see on red and black soils around Toowoomba. Its unbranched stems only grow to about 30cm high. It is very easy to grow from a piece of rhizome such as the one below. (My little finger marks the point at which the stem appears above the ground.)
This plant looks its best if it’s cut back to the ground each year after the spring/summer flowering season.

If well-watered this is a vigorously spreading plant. People with tidier gardens than mine might like to have it contained by paths or buildings. Others will see it as a good plant to naturalise in a rough, or perhaps occasionally-mown, area.


It is my favourite, being very showy at this time of year, and looks great mixed with yellowtop daisies, native geraniums, and native poppies.

Bright and Pretty Yellowtops.

Senecio species
It is being a very good year for these attractive local daisies, which are coming up all around the district without any help from humans. They make very good garden plants, and grow easily from seed - so keep your eye out for some that you can introduce to your garden, both for their colour, and their potential to attract butterflies.
There are two varieties in our district, both short-lived perennials which seed fairly freely, (but not, I find, to the point of being a nuisance in the garden). The seedlings appear in spring, and can be left in situ or transplanted easily to a place where they will be appreciated. They flower from early spring to Autumn, with strong flushes in both those seasons. I find they look their best if they’re cut back after both these seasonal flushes.
They are both very frost and drought hardy. Last year in my garden the only senecios which received artificial watering were transplanted seedlings, and they only got it for a few weeks. All the plants looked lush through the worst of the drought, flowered very well. This would be an excellent waterwise species to use in our district as a bedding annual.
The common yellowtop around Toowoomba is Senecio pinnatifolius var. pinnatifolius (Senecio lautus subsp dissectifolius). It’s an upright little bush about 30cm high and broad. They can be scraggly in dry paddocks, but in good garden soil they have fairly dense mid-green foliage and make a neat round shape.
In our more mountainous regions such as the Bunya Mountains and the Killarney district, we find the lance-leafed yellowtop Senecio pinnatifolius var serratus (Senecio lautus subsp. lanceolatus). It may also once have occurred in Toowoomba. This plant is not as tall, but spreads to about 50cm, and makes a very dense, dark green, weed-excluding groundcover.
Both species have variable leaves. This means that you can look at two plants of the same species, and think they are different. It is also possible to look at two different species and think they are both the same. The leaves at left are all from the lance-leafed yellowtops in my garden, and have all came from the same parent seed.
They can look very similar to S. pinnatifolius, or can be broader and shaped like a rather nasty barbed spear-head. The time of year, and amount of shade and water all seem to be factors which make a difference.
Do they poison the Horses?
Many good native plants are less appreciated than they deserve, because they have an unfair reputation for deadliness to stock.
Yes, Senecios do contain poisons, and eating too much of it will kill stock. However, reports of senecio poisoning in Australia are rare. There are two reasons. One is that no single plant contains much of the poison, and a bit of a munch does the animals no more harm than we suffer when we eat plants with similar poison levels such as mint, basil, or parsley.
The other is that animals don’t like the taste, and won’t eat it if anything more palatable is available. It is probable that all the reports of “seneciosis” in Australia have resulted from stock being left in badly overgrazed paddocks . You can see some examples of these on the western margins of Toowoomba. In normal, well-managed pasture, yellowtops are dotted about amongst the other pasture plants. In seasons like the present, there might be a lot of yellowtop (photo at left), but a season which favours yellowtop growth also favours good growth of pasture grasses, so there’s plenty of healthy food for stock to eat.
In seriously overgrazed paddocks, however, all the edible plants get been eaten out by the poor, miserable stock, which would rather eat absolutely anything but yellowtop. With all competing plants so thoroughly removed , the paddock becomes covered in a carpet of yellow daisies, and woe betide any poor neglected animals that are left with nothing else to eat.
(It is this carpeting effect, which causes some people to claim that this is a rampant plant which will take over your garden. It doesn't.)
(Reference “Poisonous Plants of Australia”, Selwyn L. Everist, Angus and Robertson. 1974)
And don’t Grow Madagascar Fireweed.
Senecio madagascariensis
This is a plant that just beginning to creep into our district. It is still much less common than our local native yellowtops, but could become a threat to them.
It is an aggressive coloniser, definitely a threat to stock, and could drive our local lookalikes to extinction. This could happen simply because it seeds more vigorously and takes over habitat - but there is another threat, in that people mistake the local plants for Madagascar fireweed - often calling them “fireweed” as well - and weed them out. The natives are much more easily exterminated by this method than is the interloper, as the natives have one major “crop” a year, in spring, while Madagascar fireweed can produce six generations in this time, continually re-seeding from spring to autumn.
Learn to tell the difference, and make sure you weed out any intruders - but do leave the natives in their place!
The problem is that it can be difficult to distinguish between them, as they are all variable plants, with considerable overlap in their characteristics.
A clue can be that S. madagascarensis is a larger, coarser-looking plant, with thicker leaves. People who are familiar with both the natives and the weed can easily tell them apart at a glance. For those who are not, however, it is a matter of looking at the details.
Like S. pinnatifolius var pinnatifolius, a very common plant in the paddocks around Toowoomba, Madagascar fireweed is a rather upright plant. Distinguishing between the two is usually a simple matter of looking at the leaves, despite the fact that both species are variable and have some similarities. Both can have some toothy, lance-shaped leaves, and some deeply dissected leaves. However almost all the leaves of S. pinnatifolius var pinnatifolius, are deeply dissected - hardly “leaf-shaped” at all. Only the leaves on the very young plants are lance-shaped. By contrast, S. madagascariensis has almost entirely lance-shaped leaves, often with large “teeth” around the edges. Only rarely are some of the topmost leaves, of older plants, deeply dissected.
The leaves of Senecio pinnatifolius var lanceolatus, a plant native to our higher areas such as the Bunya Mountains and Killarney, are always lance-shaped, however, and many plants have been weeded out unfairly because of it. The leaves of this plant don’t exceed 5.5cm in length, while the coarser leaves of S. madagascariensis reach 7cm. S. pinnatifolius var lanceolatus is a sprawling, ground-concealing plant, while S. madagascariensis is rather upright.
A further clue is to count the involucral bracts. These are the long narrow green bits, pointy at one end (with a little brown dot on the point), which together form the involucre - the little green “cup” in which the flower-head sits. For me, essential equipment is: a pin (so I don’t lose my place); another pin (to point with); and a good pair of reading glasses. Senecio madagascariensis has 19-21 (usually 20-21) of these bracts. Senecio lautus subsp. lanceolatus has only 12 or 13.
The bracts are a less sure way to distinguish between S. pinnatifolius var pinnatifolius and Madagascar fireweed, as the former can have from 12 to 20 of them. If your plant has fewer than 19, as many local plants do, this does confirm what you probably already knew from looking at the foliage - that it is the native species. However, there are there are plants in the area with up to 20 bracts, so the foliage is a more reliable indicator than counting bracts, in this case.

Some Spring-flowering Climbers.

Two of Australia’s most gardenworthy climbers are in flower at the moment. You can pick them out from the road, by their conspicuous whitish flowers.
One of them is the native Clematis (see January article)


The other is Wonga Vine Pandorea pandorana.
These plants are named for Pandora, the poor woman who, according to ancient Greek legend, is responsible for all the world’s troubles. She was given a box and told not to open it. Well, what would you do? She opened it of course, and out spilled the troubles, like seeds from the pods of the Pandorea vines. (They always blame the women, don’t they? I have always suspected that Eve was pressured!)
Wonga vines are popular garden plants. They are so attractive that some people are surprised at being told they are native!!!


They are robust woody twiners which have masses of small bell-flowers in spring. They come many colour forms throughout Australia.
Our locals have creamy-white flowers, and are some of the best. Even locally there are variations, with some being larger (as at right), and some having yellower throats (below).



Wonga vine’s natural environment ranges from rainforest to dry scrubs. It is frost hardy, very drought hardy, and happy in full sun, (though it grows better if the roots can be kept cool under mulch, or in shade). When it has nothing to climb on it forms a mad, tangled shrub, and we often see it in this form in paddocks, and places where the local rainforest has been cleared.
As with most Australian plants, wonga vine’s lifespan is not well-known, but you can count on at least 25 years and probably much longer.

Carnival of Flowers, Toowoomba.

Toowoomba’s annual carnival starts next Friday (19th September), and goes for a full week.
Do make sure you visit the Australian Plant Show, put on by the Toowoomba Society for Growing Australian Plants Stall. They will be selling a huge variety of native plants at low prices. It’s being held at the TAFE horticulture building, behind the Cobb & Co Museum in Lindsay Street.
The TAFE Gardens, particularly those at the Horticulture building, should also be seen. They make skilful use of native plants in a landscaped setting.
Don't forget to visit the both the orchid societies' displays as they always have native as well as introduced plants. You can often pick up some bargains there.
And do go and look at the prizewinning gardens in the native plants section. They should be particularly good this year, after the rain we’ve been having.

Open Garden at Helidon

and Native Plant Sales
There's a new event on Carnival Saturday - next Saturday 20th September - which will interest lovers of Native Plants.
Helen Howard, of 62 Helendale Drive, Helidon Spa is opening her garden for the day. She has a lovely garden featuring rare plants, but especially Grevilleas. I expect it will be a mass of beautiful flowers.
Helen is also hosting a native plant sale on the day, with a number of stallholders selling their native plant wares. This is an event not to be missed!
Helidon is twenty miles east of Toowoomba, an the highway from Brisbane. Helen's home is in
Helendale Drive, which is west of Helidon proper, between it and the Helidon Spa. The street leads directly off northern side of the highway, and its name can be clearly seen from there.
Contact : Helen Howard Tel:46977418 Mob: 0447 199 462

Dwyers Scrub Conservation Park

I was shown a new place to look at plants, this week. Dwyers Scrub at Rockmount (South east of Toowoomba) has a lovely patch of semi-deciduous vine scrub on basalt soil. It contains a very interesting and rich variety of dry rainforest species which are a delight to see, and one of the reasons why the area has been declared a reserve. (The other is that it is a habitat for the rare black-breasted button quail.)
I was particularly taken with the bottle trees. We most often see these trees out in the open, either as planted specimens or as remnants left when an area of scrub is cleared. While they can be very attractive - or interesting, depending on your point of view - they are nothing on the “real thing”. Here is a tree looking comfortably at home. Its graceful shape has been influenced by the plants growing around it which have caused it to reach for the sky, and it has a number of epiphytes taking advantage of its rough bark.

Fat Bottles, Thin Bottles

Brachychiton rupestris
Perhaps we planters of trees can learn a lesson from the bottle trees in Dwyers Scrub.
The familiar trees with grossly swollen trunks are usually seen where they have obviously been planted and grown in the open. The trunk shape appears to be the result of the trees’ situation since infancy - though the amount of water the trees are given may also contribute to an eventual fat-trunked silhouette. There may also be some genetic variation. Who knows, now what has caused the difference between “Darby” and “Joan”, the well-known trees on the highway at Hampton.


When I planted bottle trees in my own garden twenty years ago, I set out to try to produce tall, slender “bottles”, by surrounding them closely with shrubs. I appear to have succeeded. Contrast my tree (right) with a nearby footpath specimen of about the same age (below), which has already developed a figure distinguished by portliness. Busting out of its britches, isn’t it? It’s a pretty tree, but not my preferred figure-type.
Bottle trees grow well on all our local soils, tolerating a great range of drainage and pH types. They are drought, bushfire, and frost resistant.
They sometimes drop some of their leaves in late winter, having a rather thin canopy for a month or two until the new leaves grow in spring. They rarely drop them all, but as you see, my young tree, which has never done it before, has made a thorough job of its first leaf drop!
Gardening fashions of the last century and more seem to have aimed at obliterating all signs of local character in our built landscapes. So many suburbs, all over the western world, look much like any other suburbs. How disappointing to go overseas and find ourselves walking down streets that could have been in our own home towns!
So I love to see it - wherever I am, and whatever the local plants - when gardeners and local councils have put in plantings that say firmly “this is OUR place, and it’s unique and special”.
Bottle trees say this, most emphatically.

Pick out the Red Cedars from afar.

Our district’s most famous timber tree, the red cedar (Toona ciliata), was always the first to be cut out of an area, often cut by specialist cedargetters who took no interest in any other type of tree.

The cedars were easy to find in spring. Having lost their leaves in winter, they put out a characteristic flush of new red leaves at this time of year. They could be distinguished from the general green of the rainforest canopy, and targeted from far away.
We can still pick them out, both in our suburbs and in the bush, in the same way.

Comments on Nestboxes

Further to my June article on hollow trees for wildlife, reader Dylan has added this comment:
I was wondering if people out there have more info on nestboxes for wildlife? I have made 5 so far and plan to make many more. But, before I make more I wonder what others have done and what works well in your experience in terms of size of box, entrance hole size and location, materials used, height in trees, etc etc.
Are there good websites out there or blogs that I should know about? I haven't done much searching yet, so if anyone knows of one or a list of them, please do share. (I will then add my photos too..)
Nestboxes are not something I have tried. Are there any readers have experimented with them, and can give us some helpful tips?
Do you have any residents in your five boxes yet, Dylan?

A good local native for hedges.

Spring brings us flushes of pretty new leaves on many native trees and shrubs. This wild plant was responding beautifully to some heavy pruning (implemented by the cows over the fence).
It is a hedge orangebark, Maytenus bilocularis - a plant which has been suggested as a good native replacement for those photinia hedges we see springing up all over the place.
It won’t grow as fast as a photinia, but once established, a slower-growing plant does have a considerable advantage as a hedge, in that it is more easily kept to a neat shape.
Hedge orangebark will, if left alone, eventually become a small tree, and can grow as an understory plant. However, it makes such a good dense screen if grown in full sun and kept pruned, that this may be the best way of using it in a garden.
It has the additional attractive feature of yellow, bird-attracting seed capsules in late summer.
Faster growth would certainly be achieved with watering and fertilising - but like so many of our local natives, this plant can survive and look good through the heaviest drought, with no watering at all after its first few months in the ground.