Narrow-leafed Orangebark

Denhamia silvestris (Maytenus silvestris)
Family: CELASTRACEAE
This little plant, on the rainforest edge beside the track at Ravensbourne, is fruiting its heart out, despite being only knee-high.
It does get larger, but rarely much more than waist height, and is a very useful little plant for gardens. It’s natural environment is in wet Eucalypt forests on our redsoil. It doesn’t seem to mind root competition, and seems happiest where it’s shaded for part of the day.
With much shade it can get leggy, but it bushes up well with an annual prune. This can stimulate it to sucker, so it can get quite dense.
For best growth it likes a mulch of leaf litter.
This is one of the dry rainforest plants that can be bought at the Crows Nest community Nursery, one of our best sources of local native plants.
It is open on Thursday mornings, and it’s best to ring Steve Plant in advance (0417 193 665), just to make sure, before you drive all the way out there.

Strychnine Tree

Strychnos psilosperma
Family: LOGANIACEAE
Here is some very pretty fruit, on a very pretty local plant
It is an attractively shaped small tree.
Pity about the poison.
The fragrant white flowers which appear, in compact bunches, in spring, are followed by these ornamental fruits in autumn. Occasionally there are pairs of spines at the bases of the leaves, but I couldn’t find any on this specimen, growing at Gowrie Junction.
Unfortunately, all parts of the plant are probably as poisonous as the plant's name suggests. I don’t think it has a future as a garden plant.
But plants like this have a right to survive, too, and they remind us of the importance of preserving some wild places where they can do so.

Piccabeen Palm

Archontophoenix cunninghamiana
Family: ARECACEAE
The piccabeens are creeping up the hill, at Ravensbourne.
The seeds must have been appreciating all the wet weather we’ve had this summer, because the seedlings are coming up in their thousands in parts of the forest where there are very few mature adults. So we can see the forest in the National Park, which I’m told was logged will bulldozers in the thirties, slowly building up to the mature rainforest it wants to be.
Piccabeens have been given this name in Queensland because it was the name used by the aboriginal tribes in the Brisbane area. Further south, another native name, “bangalow palm” is preferred.
When mature, Piccabeens produce huge bunches of lilac flowers followed by bright orange fruits, which are eaten by birds. The heavy spathes open to reveal the flowers, and then fall off. These were once used as water containers, and were called “pickies” by Brisbane aborigines. Their potential for ornamental use in a water garden is obvious!
Piccabeens are our only large local palm, and can grow to 25 metres in sheltered gullies. They are resistant to light frosts, and drought hardy once established, which makes them the best choice of palm for a local garden.
They look their best planted in multiples. If you are prepared to nurse them through their first few years, they will reward you with a “rainforest look - perhaps planted with other drought hardy rainforest plants such as celerywoods (Polyscias elegans), black beans (Castanospermum australe) and lacebark trees (Brachychiton discolor).
Fast-growing plants all, and all able to withstand light frosts, these are good starter plants for a rainforest garden in the Toowoomba district.

Blue Ginger

Alpinia caerulea
Family: ZINGIBERACEAE
These ginger plants are in fruit at Ravensbourne at the moment. We rarely see the local species in gardens, which is a pity, as they are very hardy plants, with ornamental leaves and fruits. The purple and white flowers, though pretty enough, and fragrant, aren’t showy enough to out-compete beautiful flowers of the imported ginger species in any popularity stakes.
These blue-fruits will last a long time on the plant (unless eaten first, by you or by a bowerbird). They have very little flesh, but what there is has such a good flavour that it’s well worth sucking the seeds for it. (Do be responsible, though, and don’t eat any unless you have first grown them yourself)
The seeds themselves are a useful spice, tasting much like cardamom, and can be used (crushed) to flavour foods. The tender growing ends of the roots have a mild flavour, not nearly as strong as commercial ginger root, and can be used as a cooked vegetable. The leaves are also useful in the kitchen, for wrapping food for cooking
Our local gingers are clumping plants, somewhat above waist-height, suitable for growing in dense shade (including indoors), and under trees. They have been largely supplanted, for garden use, by a northern form of the same species which has red-backed leaves and is less sun-tolerant. Our locals can be grown in almost full sun, especially if they’re given good thick mulch to keep the roots cool.
A well-grown plant might have some 30 stems. For those who dream of a simple life in a thatched hut, these are suitable plants for roofing.
They are frost tender.

Yellow Pittosporum

Pittosporum revolutum
Family: PITTOSPORACEAE
What lovely, fat fruits this plant has. They are bigger and wartier than those of other pittosporums, and have spent months looking attractive as they have ripened from green. At last they have burst open, and the seeds are ready for planting, so I can grow more of these rewarding plants.
They are smaller shrubs than the other pittosporums, rarely getting to more than head-height. They have shiny dark green leaves, and make good screen plants.
A friend has his own name for the plant - “hairy pits” - a reference to its softly hairy new growth, another attractive feature.
The plants are said to be iron-hungry, but I find they show no signs of deficiency on my snuffy red soil. I have found them to be drought resistant - mine were planted three years ago, and are almost to shoulder height, despite having been given no water after the first few months of their lives.
They are understorey plants and I put them in under taller trees, where they haven’t had to cope with more than light frosts.

Green Bollygum

Neolitsea australiensis
Family: LAURACEAE
The fruits of green bollygums are early this year at Ravensbourne, beginning to ripen already. They are showy dark red, ripening to black, and look rather like giant versions of fruit of the closely related camphor laurel tree. They are highly nutritious and very attractive to birds, making this one of our best species for planting in bird-friendly gardens.
Only the female trees have the bird-attracting fruits, so it is worth planting a number of them, to be sure of a mix of the sexes
Bollygums are fast-growing small, slender trees, which like to grow in the understorey of dry rainforests. We have two local species. Green bollygum is happiest on red soil where it will get little or no frost. (Its cousin the white bollygum, Neolitsea dealbata, grows on a wider range of soils, and is hardier to both frost and drought. It can be distinguished from green bollygum by the hairiness of its young leaves.)
The virtue of understorey plants in gardens is that their roots co-exist happily with the roots of other trees, so they are good for planting under established trees or in shrubberies and rainforest-style gardens, where close planting is the go.

When new, green bollygum’s leaves are very distinctive ornamental purplish-green, and hang limply. As they mature, they become shiny green, with a pale greyish-white waxy bloom on their backs. Young plants have particularly large, showy leaves.

 This is a plant which likes fertile soil, and appreciates a good layer of organic mulch.

Green bollygum is one of the plants that is unable to germinate near its vigorous, introduced relative the camphor laurel tree. In an ideal world, we would be taking care that these invasive weeds are never allowed to escape into the shrinking remnants of the bollygum’s existing habitats, as they could cause its extinction. The hope that bollygums will continue to exist in the wild, a few hundred years from now, may be a vain one. Camphor laurels have been spreading in the bushland here ever since they were introduced as an ornamental plant more than a century ago. Though they spread more in our district than they have in coastal habitats, it may be inevitable that this single species will eventually take over from the eighteen or so of its laurel-family relatives which now grace our rainforest habitats.

Brisbane Lily

Proiphys cunninghamii
Family: AMARYLLIDACEAE
I showed you a photo of some of my lovely white Brisbane lilies last December. Their green bulbils have at last ripened to orange.
I find that few of the green bulbils actually make it to maturity, so am rather pleased with a crop of three.