Gumbi Gumbi

Pittosporum angustifolium
(Pittosporum phillyraeoides)
FAMILY: PITTOSPORACEAE
Spring has certainly sprung this week at Irongate Environmental Park.






















The gumbi gumbi are flowering with enthusiasm. They couldn’t even wait for last season’s fruit to be finished! (Double click to see detail.)












Insects of all kinds love their sweet nectar. This butterfly is a “striated pearl white” (Elodina parthia), one of the many attracted to the park by its plentiful supply of host plants, the native capers Capparis mitchellii.







These flowers will be followed, in summer and autumn, by a showy display of orange fruits.















They split to reveal seeds which are covered with sticky red arils, and are much-loved by seed-eating birds. King parrots feasting on them is one of our outstandingly beautiful local sights. The seeds are very bitter, and are said to ruin the flavour of the flesh of emus which eat them.





Gumbi gumbi (also spelled Gumby gumby) is one of our prettiest local native plants. This specimen which I photographed in March, in a roadside park at Jondaryan, shows its neat natural shape.





It responds well to pruning, as the results of this rough job - done by cattle - demonstrate. With the secateurs, you can create a dense screening shrub whose foliage weeps to ground level, or a shady little tree. Cattle bush is one of its many common names. (Others are cumbi cumbi, meemei, berrigan, native apricot, and butterbush.)



This is a drought hardy and frost resistant plant. It grows well on all our basalt soils, but particularly likes our heavy blacksoil. Deep-rooted plants, they flourish despite competition from other trees, and are happy to grow under Eucalyptus trees.
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Since writing this blog, I have received a steady stream of comments written by people who want to publicise their own opinions on the medicinal value (or lack of value) of this plant. Many also apparently want me to publish a statement that I endorse their views. A few even become abusive because I will not do this.

Please note that this is a personal blogsite, not a public forum.
Its subject is plants of the Toowoomba region, their place in the local ecology, and the use of them in gardens.  I have no more expertise than the next person on the subject of the medicinal uses of plants, therefore do not include this topic.
Comments on the subject will not be published.
Patricia Gardner.

Oleander-Leaf Wattle

Thank Goodness for Road Verges and Wild Places.
Acacia neriifolia
FAMILY: MIMOSACEAE
This wattle is the glory of our redsoil roadsides every August, yet it is a wattle that very few people choose to plant. When not flowering it’s a mildly attractive tree, but the only planted examples I have ever seen are a few scattered street in town. It’s a small tree (to about 8 metres), and is very suitable for the purpose. It would also suit a moderate-sized suburban block. It tolerates our worst droughts and frosts.

Here it is, growing wild in the Charles and Motee Rogers Park in Highfields. While I’m glad the park exists, I find it sad to think that glorious displays like this which are part of the annual cycle of the seasons in the Toowoomba district, may eventually only exist in parks and reserves. I’d like to think they would never disappear from our roadsides, but as a community we need to develop a higher regard for our dwindling patches of natural environment, if our great-grandchildren are ever to see a sight like the one we now take for granted each August, on the drive between Toowoomba and Crows Nest.
This tree is also a butterfly host plant.
For about it see August 2009

Forest Redgum

Eucalyptus tereticornis
FAMILY: MYRTACEAE
This is another common local eucalypt, a beautiful tree whose leaves are among the top favourites with koalas.

Our local redgums are coming into bud now, and showing why they are called “tereticornis”. Terete is a word used in botany to describe things which are cylindrical or slightly tapering, and “cornis” means a horn. You can see that the bud-cap - the “calyptus” which gives Eucalyptus their name, is shaped like a straight little horn.
As the flowers mature, they will push off this cap with their many stamens, and attract many insects, including honeybees with their copious nectar.
Redgums can grow to be very big trees, with trunks up to 2m in diameter (though trees of this size would be hundreds of years old). They respond well to coppicing, which is a good way to manage them if they are being grown to be harvested for their good quality firewood.
If you see Eucalyptus overseas, they are quite likely to be this easy-to- grow species. It is a common subject for forestry plantations, grown for its heavy, red construction timber, and for firewood. It is not always appreciated, however. Like other Eucalyptus species, it has a tendency to become an environmental weed when grown away from its natural predators - and a fast-growing woody weed which can support devastating bushfires is an unwelcome immigrant.
We Australians are aware of the second reason why gumtrees are unpopular overseas. Eucalyptus’ ability to out-compete other tree species by taking the lion’s share of available water, especially in the upper layers of the soil, is familiar to us. Our native dry rainforest species are deep-rooted, so can co-exist, but tree species from our wetter rainforest have shallower roots. Like many introduced garden species, they feel the pinch if asked to share their soil with gumtrees.

While this is much-needed koala habitat tree is well worth growing, it is best kept for large properties, parks, and highway planting.

Gum-topped Box

Eucalyptus moluccana
FAMILY: MYRTACEAE
I photographed this tree at Franke Scrub, Highfields, where it grows on the red soil. It is one of our faster-growing local Eucalypts, an excellent choice for owners of acreages who want to restore local native vegetation for the sake of our wildlife.
As far as Koalas are concerned, this is one of the “top three” food trees, along our part of the Great Dividing Range.

It also tends to form hollows, so offers accommodation to gliders, ringtail possums, and those local birds which need hollows for nesting.
Its late summer flowers are appreciated by beekeepers and their flocks, as well as by native bees.
As you see, this healthy tree is also carrying a good crop of mistletoe , so will also be hosting Jezabel and Azure butterfly species, providing pleasure for all those Highfields residents who have flowers to attract the adult butterflies. (The mistletoe is the common russett mistletoe Amyema miquellii , a member of the Loranthaceae family.)
For those who want to provide themselves with a carbon-neutral form of home heating, this tree is a source of top-grade firewood.

Sticky Wallaby Bush

Beyeria viscosa
FAMILY: EUPHORBIACEAE


I found this plant growing in the Jack McEwan State Forest, near Pittsworth. The soil there is our typical “hillside black” - better drained than the heavy black soil of the Darling Downs plains, and very stony.
I wondered what was “sticky” about it, as it isn’t sticky to touch - but one of my companions pressed a specimen between sheets of newspaper, and apparently it stuck quite firmly!
The plants are dioecious. Flowers on the male bushes have little yellow flowers with no petals. They are pretty little balls of yellow stamens, framed by green sepals. Flowers on the female plants are nondescript, and followed by these fruits, which, at present, are interesting but not showy. I am not familiar with this plant, but I have seen a photo of the species, taken in Western Australia, with showy plum-red fruits. I plan to keep an eye on Jack Mack’s plants, to discover whether they will change colour as they mature.
Wallaby bushes are pleasantly attractive plants with silvery leaves. They are said to make a good screen in gardens, and to benefit from pruning. To fully appreciate the species, it would be necessary to have at least one male and one female plant, so planting a row of them does seem like a good idea.

Native Daisies in the Main Street

Senecio pinnatifolius
FAMILY: ASTERACEAE



I was very surprised to see this yellow daisy growing in Ruthven Street. A local native plant in the main street of Toowoomba is a rare sight indeed!










I wondered whether it had sneaked in by itself, or whether it had been planted by someone who could see how very well it would fit into this designed garden in front of an inner-city church.







Our native yellowtops are one of the bright notes of winter, in this district.
I do think our tree-planted main street is an improvement on the “tar and cement” we used to have, but I was reflecting on how sad and bedraggled the deciduous trees looked when I spotted the daisies.
They were like a breath of honest fresh air, “representing the season” as it really is here in Toowoomba - a pleasing contrast to the “wannabe English” look of the trees.
For more on this gardenworthy local native plant, see Sep 2008

Myrtle Rust Reaches Toowoomba

I saw my first case of Myrtle rust this week.
I hadn’t expected to see it in the Toowoomba area until spring. Our typically cold, dry winter would slow it down, and I thought we would be able to enjoy a brief respite before it started to spread in earnest with the warmer weather and the first summer rains.



Here it is already, however, at a friend’s place at Mt Kynoch.






It is on a malabar apple Syzigium jambos, a species which is already known to be particularly susceptible to the rust. Malabar apple has been brought to Australia from south-east Asia, and is grown for its edible fruits and its creamy powder-puff flowers. Closely related to our native lillypillies, it has become an invasive weed in some areas.
Myrtle rust is still so new to Australia (it’s only been known here for 14 months, though it may have gone undetected for a year or two before that) that we don’t know, yet, to what extent our various local native plant species will be affected. Some have already proven to be very susceptible, others less so.
One thing we do know, is that the disease is so easily spread, by insects and the wind, that it is inevitable that it will find every susceptible plant in Australia no matter what we try to do to prevent it.
Myrtle rust is restricted to members of the myrtle family (Myrtaceae). They are all trees or shrubs, so a disease which affects them has the potential to have a major impact on the Australian landscape. The likelihood is that it will make mature plants look ugly, and affect seedlings badly. A worst-case scenario is that seedlings will die en masse, and extinctions of more susceptible species will result.
Plants from this family have been very popular in gardens. The rust is going to affect the decisions we make about what we plant. We will also find ourselves deciding to remove many of them, and replace them with plants from some other family.
So far, myrtle rust has been identified on 73 Queensland species. Unfortunately there are likely to be still more species affected.
Here is a site that gives advice about what to do if you find myrtle rust in your garden.
http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/4790_20154.htm
Don’t overlook the importance of reporting affected plants to Biosecurity Queensland on 13 25 23. They can’t prevent it or cure it, but their research will be our future guide as to what Myrtaceae are really worth planting in our gardens.
To this I would add that I believe home gardeners have a responsibility not to let their plants act as carriers which might make a bridge for the fungus to reach native bushland or commercial growers whose livelihoods are under threat.
There are some plants which I think we should remove even if they are not yet infected. I leave it to you to decide which ones, but they would obviously include any Myrtaceae that we just don’t love very much, particularly those which are still small enough to remove easily. Perhaps they should include any others of species which are already known to be very susceptible. Realistically, we have to accept that these plants’ period of beauty will end shortly, and they are certainly easier to dispose of without spreading infection if it’s done before they get it. The sooner they go, the sooner we can be planting something in their place.
There are others which we should remove as soon as they show symptoms. These certainly include the very susceptible ones. No matter how hard we fight to save them, they are always going to be reinfected. We might as well bite the bullet sooner, rather than later. It will save quite a bit of effort and money which might be put into pouring poisons into the environment to no purpose.
(Note the DPI advice on how to dispose of infected plants http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/4790_20154.htm )
Depressed?
So am I.
I try to cheer myself up with the thought that only 10% of Australian plants are in the Myrtaceae family. Those popular Grevilleas and other Proteaceae will be unaffected, and there are a great many garden-worthy plants from other families which have never even been tried in our gardens.
Meanwhile, some Myrtaceae may prove to be resistant. I find it reassuring that there are no Eucalyptus species on the list so far. I hope I am not being premature.