Eucalypts in Montrose

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I was driving home the other day along Mt Dandenong Road, and just past Balmoral Street on the left hand side I noticed dozens and dozens of similar looking Eucalyptus trees. The bark seemed to me like something very distinct and unlike Eucalypts I had seen before, it was brown, very dense and furrowed, and persistent all the way to the top and along the branches. 

Bark on Eucalyptus tree

I did some research and have truly gotten nowhere to identifying these trees. The bark that I thought was so distinct seems to be on half of Eucalyptus species out there. One species that seems to fit the criteria is Eucalyptus sideroxylon or Red Ironbark, but I can’t be too sure because several others look similar! Below are photos I took of the trees along Mt. Dandenong Road.

     

 

The leaves, as you can see by the pictures below, are simple, lanceolate-falcate, and dull green. The buds along the stem are still young, and I think it would be best to wait until the flowers bloom in spring to try and identify the trees.

All of these trees were on the nature strips outside the residential streets. I think it would be interesting to know how old the trees are, but to surmise that I think I would need to have an idea of how old the town is. According to sources (below in references), Montrose was established from 1870 to 1880, making the town 143 years old. The first primary school opened in 1880, and the first official post office of Montrose opened in 1898. From this I can probably say that people were residing in Montrose from 1870, and the town became popular during the 1880s. Maybe these trees have been right where they stand since then? Maybe council workers from the 1880s planted them? Then again I really have no idea, but if I have seen Eucalyptus trees that I know to be nearly 10 years old that look half this height then about 100 years old seems like a pretty reasonable guess. I actually just realised that this ramble about how old these trees are does not help me in the slightest. I’m not a tree expert; I can’t tell how old a tree is by looking at it. I need a Eucalyptus expert or something, or I just need to wait until spring to see the flowers and then I can probably identify these trees.

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montrose,_Victoria

http://yarraranges.vic.gov.au

Growing rosemary

Another blog about a plant from my uni’s nursery! On the 20^th of March we were given cuttings of Rosmarinus officinalis ‘Tuscan Blue’ which we cut into sub-terminal (stem) cuttings and terminal (tip) cuttings. I did tip cuttings with IBA (Indolebutyric acid) to help with root growth, and by April 10, 8 out of the 10 cuttings with IBA had struck really well. We then transplanted 8 of them and I took 2 home.

 

My plan was to put them in the garden somewhere, along the side of the house, or in the bed out front, but they’re so tiny I don’t think they could a transplant yet! Now a few people have told me about how hardy rosemary is, how they didn’t water their rosemary bush for about 5 years and it hasn’t died yet, but I think for now I might just keep nursing them every few days with some water. They did live in the fog house for 20 days while they grew roots, so I guess I think they’ve just adjusted to that kind of treatment and if I don’t water them a decent amount, they’ll die.

Another idea I had was to plant them at my crop plot at uni, but then I’d have to transplant them again next year after they’d gotten to a substantial size. And I don’t like the idea of just having them in a pot on the ground somewhere, because I don’t know, I just don’t. These rosemary plants are my first plants at home, because I so generously gave mum the marigolds, and I’m going to treat them well!

Just like the previous blog, I’m going to make a dainty little fact card for good old rosemary. Most of this information is from the Burnley Plant Guide, and some from other places referenced below.

FACT CARD

Rosmarinus officinalis
Rosmarinus: dew of the sea. (isn't that beautiful?)
officinalis: used in medicine (from "opificina", shortened to "officina", originally a workshop or shop, later a monastic storeroom, then a herb-store, pharmacy or drug-shop).

Common name: Rosemary

Family: Lamiaceae

Type: shrub.

Growth rate: medium to fast.

Origin: Southern Europe and North Africa.

Leaves: Simple, opposite, linear, leathery with revolute margins.

Flowers: Small, blue two-lipped flowers in clusters at the leaf axils, forming short racemes. Flowers in spring and sometimes sporadically.

Cultivation and maintenance: Very tough, can be trimmed after flowering, and clipped as a hedge.

Cultivars: vigorous and upright 'Tuscan Blue' is a particularly good form, useful for hedging

Propagation: cuttings.

References

http://www.kew.org/plants-fungi/Rosmarinus-officinalis.htm

Growing marigold

In early March, my nursery group at uni sowed some marigold seeds, Calendula officinalis ‘Fiesta Gitana’. The purpose of this little exercise was to grow colourful, easy bedding plants to be sold with a community organisation specialising in propagated plants, the Friends of Burnley Gardens.

They were sown on March 13 into media with a layer of vermiculite on top, and put in the fog greenhouse where the tray was irrigated once a day, the bench kept at a nice temperature of 24°C, and the air at 25°C. This is all relevant, because of how well they performed after I transplanted them 35 days later on April 17 (by which time they were very much overdue for potting). I gave most of them to Friends of Burnley, but 6 I took home to give to my mother who, 5 days later, planted them in two hanging baskets. And they were completely fine! No forking, or wilting, nothing. For most of their lives as seedlings, environmental conditions were perfect, then suddenly they were put outside in cool temperatures, which according to bom.vic.gov, were between 14°C and 18°C. What a hardy plant! Below are two photos of each hanging basket on the deck.

I took it upon myself to find more about marigolds, particularly this species, so here’s a little fact card.

 Photo from http://flora.nhm-wien.ac.at/Seiten-Arten/Calendula-officinalis.htm

FACT CARD

Family: Asteraceae or Compositae

Common name: Marigold

Type: Upright annual herb

Uses: Annual display, container plant, border plant, companion plant, easy to establish

Leaves: Dull green, oblong to spatulate, hairy

Flowers: Monoecious (only stamens or carpels on one flower), double orange to yellow daisies

Propagation: Seed

Calendula: from the Latin "calendae", the first day of the month.
officinalis: used in medicine (from "opificina", shortened to "officina", originally a workshop or shop, later a monastic storeroom, then a herb-store, pharmacy or drug-shop).

References:

bom.vic.gov:

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/dwo/201304/html/IDCJDW3050.201304.shtml

Fact card:

http://botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/m/marigo16.html

http://www.pfaf.org/user/Plant.aspx?LatinName=Calendula+officinalis

Tomato plants?

Over the past few months I’ve been growing two cherry tomato plants, among other things, in my vegie plot at uni (scientific name is Lycopersicon esculentum var. cerasiforme from Solanaceae for anyone who’s interested). For some reason I was under the impression that they would be an enjoyable crop to manage, but they’re really not.

Firstly, you’ve got laterals that pop up every few days, and by the time the plant is nearly 60cm tall you’ve got enough foliage to fight through it will take you about a minute per lateral to prune it.

Secondly, there’s its aroma, which I got over within about a month of having the tomato plants. This smell is made by the essential oils of it leaves. According to one journal article (cited below), the chemical composition of the oils includes the chemical compounds terpinene, α-pinene and β-pinene. Terpenine has a woody, citrus scent and pinene has a pine scent. These two compounds make the scent (whether alpha or beta) of the tomato plant, and can are also used it mineral turpentine.

Thirdly, I don’t even like tomatoes so it’s probably not worth me growing them.

Fourthly (is that a word? I’ve never gotten to fourthly before), my tomatoes have developed a disease that’s made them misshapen and inedible, even if I had wanted them in the first place. Is there an art to growing tomatoes? According to most of the information, I think this fungus disease is tomato spotted wilt. It may also be frost damage, but because of the distorted fruit and yellow rings, the leaves with irregular dark brown spots, yellowing, and wilting, I think it is spotted wilt. I’ve read that you shouldn’t plant anything of Solanaceae in the area of soil infected by the fungus disease.

Disease on the fruit

Disease on the leaves

Fifthly, it’s not even prime tomato season, and the weather has been pretty unpredictable these past few months, so maybe this whole blog is pointless because these aren’t very good conditions for poor Lycopersicon esculentum.

Journal article:

Leaf Essential Oil Constituents of Lycopersicon Esculentum (Mill.)

Emmanuel E. Essien, Sherifat O. Aboaba, Isiaka A. Ogunwande, Olusegun Ekundayo
Journal of Essential Oil Bearing Plants
Vol. 9, Iss. 3, 2006

My first hydrangea pruning!

So I’ve been doing a degree in environmental horticulture at Burnley for eight weeks now. Before starting the course I had literally never planted anything before, so it was a pretty steep learning curve from the beginning! Every week is something new to me, and today when my mother asked me (because of my wealth of experience and knowledge, obviously) if we should prune the hydrangea on the side of our house. We decided that seeing as the state the house from the previous owners (who’d owned the house for 10 years) was, for want of a euphemism, a bit derelict, it probably needed a hard pruning and I thought I’d give it a go.

First I did a search on my university’s plant database, the good old Burnley Plant Guide, for ‘Hydrangea’. Even though most of the plant was dry and wilting, the budding horticulturist that I am managed to identify it as Hydrangea macrophylla based on the ovate shape of the leaves with serrated edges, its rounded inflorescences called terminal corymbs, and on its general erect form (and it also might have helped that my mother knew what genus it was).

Now I know a bit about pruning lateral buds, and from one of my many rookie mistakes in my practical class, I learnt that when pruning stems, you need to leave at least two vegetative buds otherwise the stem is useless. Just to be a bit surer though, I did a bit of a read on the maintenance of the Hydrangea macrophylla on the Burnley Plant Guide (what else?) and on Plants For A Future and found that this species is really tolerant of hard pruning, so off I went!

The after photo

 Pruned to the bottom two vegetative buds!

 The epic pile of cuttings

The process of pruning took about forty minutes with all my um-ing and ah-ing over which stems were too rotted (keep in mind this plant had been neglected for ten years) or too dry and woody to keep, and which ones were okay.

I was pretty happy with my efforts. I don’t think well see any great flowering next year, but seeing as the old plant was in a bit of a dire state the hard pruning might be worth it in the long run!