Plant Notes

To mark the beginning of mid-semester break, I gave myself some long lazy playtime on campus. A bucket of water and secateurs and a ramble around the gardens. A snip here, a snip there. Propagation is a hell of a drug, especially when your campus is nestled within a botanical garden that is quite literally packed full of uncommon and unusually beauties.

Plants have this magic power called 'totipotency' which enables them to revert a cell that already has a specialised function back into a sort of primordial undifferentiated state, and then change that cell yet again into a new specialisation. This is why you can cut a sprig of rosemary, and even though what you have in your hand is a branch that has never touched the ground, it will nonetheless grow roots where previously no roots would grow. They're wizards. Plants are wizards.

That said, the power of this shapechanging ability does vary from species to species, and some plants are better at it than others. My previous attempt to strike cuttings of Carissa macrocarpa failed, which was partially expected as the literature indicates as much. But, it's spring, and the time of year, particularly the time in the plant's growth cycle, one attempts to propagate via cutting, can influence success. Hopefully the warm weather and a little rooting hormone will up my chances. There are also some seeds, harvested from the few fruit I could find, sitting in a greenhouse. They have a long germination period however, so it will be some time before I know whether or not they took.

I've also propagated Bambusa oldhamii previously as well, although only one of those cuttings took. Again, the time of year may have influenced this. It's a marvellous bamboo. The sort of bamboo one dreams of, if that dream is a painting and the painting is the idealisation of a bamboo forest. More than one plant would be nice.

Calothamnus quadrifidus is new to me. I'm a sucker for those incredibly unusual Western Australian plants. I have no room for these larger shrubs and trees, and don't want to put them in the ground here, but still... An individual branch looks as though it should be a conifer, but it in Myrtaceae. The flowers have a touch of Grevillea to them, surprising red things that erupt from the stem. Did no research on propagation by cuttings on this one, so we'll just wait and see.

Always make sure your containers have drainage holes. The take away tub I used for some tassel fern cuttings did not, and when I wandered by the fog house to see how they were going, I discovered they were in fact swimming. Didn't seem to bother the cuttings in the slightest, but I repotted them all the same. The cutting I have in water propagation at home hasn't done anything yet, but hasn't wilted either. That's not nothing.

I ventured down to the field station and hacked at the Malva parviflora around my veggie plot. I'd let it go far too long, and it was beastly. Did not attempt to pull out the roots. Smaller plants put up an incredible fight, so I'm content to cut its head off whenever it pops up instead. Planted some Sugar Snap peas and this time remembered to put a bird net around them. The ducks on campus are greedy little buggers. Harvested some silverbeet, poked at the garlic, sprayed myself in the face with a leaky hose.

There were orphan plants on offer outside the nursery when I got back from the field station. Calothamnus gibbosus, sibling to the one I'd just taken cuttings off. These were incredibly pot bound. Incredibly. So much so, they'd grown well out of their tubs and were in fact pot bound in the tray they'd been sitting on. Had to cut them out of their plastic, and cut the root ball. It was so incredibly hard and tight. Like weaving, one said. I saw topographical lines in the tightly packed roots. I don't know if they'll take kindly to the root damage, but free plants. Why not?



Today I tackled some of my projects at home. I potted up my Pseudopanax ferox into an air-pruning pot significantly bigger than its current pot. Got potting mix everywhere. It'll be happy in there for good few years go come, and I won't have to worry about the roots girdling. I don't think I've really shared any photos of this plant. It's just...very difficult to snap. Really needs a photography backing sheet to show its bizarre form. I do love it. Ma calls it my 'minimalist Christmas tree'. It looks like a drawing of a tree. A very simple drawing at that.

The elkhorn fern I've had for more than a year, and have had no troubles with it at all. It grows beautifully. I just haven't been able to mount it successfully. Partly my own ignorance. It had come away entirely, so I gave it a clean up, cutting away most of the rooting mass at the back and dividing the fern, as it turned out there were actually 3 all smooshed together. I bound them to the mount with old stockings. Hopefully, especially being as its growing season now, it'll root in this time.

Potted up some tubestock I picked up from Bili Nursery & Landcare. They're indigenous to the area, which in this case means the SE sandbelt, not the clay soil I'm on. None of these darlings will be going in the ground. Not until I pull my thumb up and start doing serious soil work. Anyway, what's particularly cool is that these plants are propagated from local remnant growth, and they're unexpected for an area I think of as being entirely urbanised.

I picked up Eryngium ovinium as I do love a spikey sweetheart. I have another Eryngium - not native - which does not at all cope with our summer. In fact, I thought it was dead, except it started suddenly growing back beautifully in winter. I'm hoping this native Eryngium does better in summer, so it's a wait and see plant.

I was very excited to find an Isopogon - Isopogon ceratophyllus - which occurs naturally in Victoria, so I had to grab that as well. Its leaves are wider than those of I. formosus, which is now fairly well known in cultivation. They could almost be mistaken for Grevillea leaves.

Acrotriche serrulata was new to me. Or, at least, if I'd seen it before, I hadn't noticed it. It's a meek little thing, with quite a cute little habit - almost looks as though its bonsai'ed itself - but the selling point is the nectar pods it puts out after flowering. I'm told these taste like crème brûlée. Yeah. You read that right. Damn straight I'm giving that a go.

And finally, I repotted my Acacia aphylla. Bought as tube stock ages ago, now a good little plant with only a little bit of weird sideways growth due to odd positioning.

I'm actually terrible at "not acquiring any more of those WA specialist plants that look so cool".

It was a really nice day. Warm bright sun, a light breeze, and the magpies sussing out the birdbath. There's an old apron I use when mucking about in the dirt, but it doesn't stop me from getting dirt up my nose and in my socks. Sometimes I wear gloves, but it doesn't feel proper unless my fingernails are black and brown. And bugger, I forgot to put the shade cloth on the greenhouse. Tomorrow. I'm well pooped now.

Plant Notes

Amophorphallus bulbifer had finished rotting out its leaves, so it was time to move the pot out of the fernery. One nice little corm of good health in the palm of the compound leaf. These corms drop to the ground when the leaves die out over the dormancy, and go on to make new tubers. I don't know if this one is big enough to do so, but I popped it down on the pot anyway. Pot has been moved beneath a table, outside. There it will be protected from the frost and getting too much rain, but still get some good cold temperatures.

Pulled out the Ginkgo biloba. Roots were just starting to peek out the drainage hole. It's fully dormant at the moment, so a good time for it to move house. I'm a little concerned about the roots. They're marvellously healthy, but will of course go woody, and I couldn't help thinking about the issue of root girdling which occurs with woody plants. The roots grow around the circle of a pot because there's no where else to go, and with age they thicken and end up strangling the plant. An airpruning pot could help this...except that Ginkgo really wants to keep its feet wet. I'm not sure how it would like all that drying out. Possibly, I may just have to accept that this particular Ginkgo will not be a giant in the ground, but stay wee in a wee pot for its life. Hmm. When I potted it up last time, I put a chux in the bottom of the pot, specifically to retain water down there. That does strike me as a rather daft move, but the plant apparently loved it and had no problem just busting through it. So. No harm done? Not a move I repeated this time, but the roots were so knit through the chux I didn't take it out.

For the time being, it's now in a bigger pot. Gave it a small prune, watered it in, and have put it back in its place to be ignored until it wakes up again in spring. I'm trying again to root the cuttings. They didn't take last year. We'll see.

Finally remembered to bring nail scissors into the greenhouse, and gave a lot of plants a nice tidying. Lots of dead inflorescences that needed snipping. Amazing how removing the scruff makes a plant look so much perkier.

I've learned so much about plants, but I still don't feel like I know what I'm doing.

we learn

Cerpogia stapeliiformis is identified as being particularly hard to grow in cultivation. Being as it looks like a fat dead stick, I had to give it a shot. Unfortunately I doomed myself to failure the day after bringing this baby home. It had some light scale growing on it, and using a Q-tip and some soapy water I wiped away what I could. Even that light touch of moisture was enough to start in rot on the growing tip of the longest stem. I've since amputated and sealed the cut with ground cinnamon, but the rot appears to have spread throughout the plant anyway.

My woolly senecios aren't looking too happy either. Scarposus and haworthii require the same conditions and care: heaps of sun and extremely careful watering, as they're also prone to rot. I pulled both of them up today to check the roots. Scarposus is looking okay in the roots, but extremely limp and withered in the leaves. In any other succulent, I'd assume that would be from lack of water, but this one I'm not so sure about. Haworthii has unfortunately had a big root die off. Still some good living ones visible, but on the whole, not great. I'm mostly certain the potting medium and pots I had them in were contributing factors here, so I've repot them both in near pure scoria and more open pots. I'll think about giving them some water in a couple of weeks.

I'm one of those foolish individuals who creates their own superstitions. The Senecio haworthii I bought the day I sat my STAT tests, as a celebration. In my mind, the possibility of me going to university is now inextricably entwined with the life of this plant. Things aren't looking good.

The university sent out an email notifying all who'd applied for the course I've taken aim at that this course will no longer be offered as part time. No reason was given for this.

It's a spanner in the works. Full time the course is 20 contact hours a week, with homework and prep on the side. Sometimes, I feel strong enough to manage that. Most of the time I don't. Much as I want to try full time, I had been assuming I'd do the degree part time.

Right now, unemployed, I'm living part time. Fibromyalgia first manifested as my working part time, but after the last few years and all that has happened, I exist part time. There are so many hours that perhaps another person could use productively, that I spend simply being exhausted. I know I can study just fine, I'm doing it right now with chemistry. The system just needs to be flexible. I'm willing. I can do these things. In my own time.

There's small room for wiggle, as in the case of "exceptional circumstances" the Dean may allow a student to complete the degree part time. I don't yet know what constitutes an exceptional circumstance, and until I know whether or not I even have an offer I don't wish to draw attention to myself. This degree only has a small yearly intake, and I have a pretty distinct name.

It could be that chronic illness is not an acceptable reason for part time study. In which case, the only option I have is to drop the course entirely. The offer of a refund of the VCAT application fee is small compensation given the surrounding money I've sunk into merely making myself eligible to apply.

There are other paths and plans. But.

I want to get myself into a place where I can stop trying to get into a place, and start focusing my energy on being in that place. I want to stop reaching and reaching and reaching and start building.

It is all learning. Sometimes plants die, and sometimes plans are thwarted.

Other plants thrive. Other plans work. This disappointment will pass. One day.

The Unchanging Ginkgo

We had a Ginkgo biloba plant when I was a child. It sat in a pot on the front verandah by the door, where it was mostly neglected. It always fascinated me. A book on dinosaurs had told me that this was a relic of prehistoric times, that this plant was kicking around millions of millions of years ago with dinosaurs (everything is a dinosaur when you're a kid). It was a living fossil. 

This confused me to no end. I'd stare at this small plant which was shorter than I was and wonder how could it possibly be that old. Especially since it was dead, I mean, they'd found it in the fossil record. Maybe this was a cutting from some ancient behemoth ginkgo, but then, where was this monster dinosaur tree? How did such an incredible time-travelling plant end up on our front verandah? What if we killed it? Oh gods, what if we killed the living fossil? Took me rather a long time to realise that 'living fossil' simply meant it had not evolved from that form in the intervening millennia. Even the smartest of kids have - often peculiar - intellectual blindspots.

We did end up kill the living fossil. Poor plant.

Because of this misunderstanding I've always viewed the ginkgo with awe, and it is a plant that lends itself to awe with ease. Those leaves are so simple and elegant, reminiscent of nothing in the neighbouring yards or the school playgrounds. Their lack of complexity in form and placement evoke an era of evolution that is only visible to us in fossils. The hint of what is to come, what surrounds us now, in their texture.

As an adult, I appreciate the living fossil for what I perceive to be its stubborn indifference to the passage of time and the incredible changes wrought in the world around it. The supercontinent of Pangea no longer exists, but this plant does, unchanged. While its surrounding peers figured out how to do flowers - flowers! such complex, deceitful structures! - and changed their leaves and skin to suit the environment, the ginkgo just sat back and said, "Nah, I'm good." Admittedly, it's likely that the ginkgo is extinct in the wild and has survived these past centuries only due to the practice of planting them at temples and shrines, shared by many cultures around Asia.

This ginkgo tree is planted at the Tsurugaokuhachimangu in Kamakura, Japan. I visited in 2007, and did indeed get to see a ancient behemoth ginkgo. From the wiki:

The ginkgo that had stood next to Tsurugaoka Hachimangū's stairway almost from its foundation and which appears in almost every old print of the shrine was completely uprooted and greatly damaged at 4:40 in the morning on March 10, 2010. According to an expert who analyzed the tree, the fall is likely due to rot. Both the tree's stump and a section of its trunk replanted nearby have produced leaves.
The tree was nicknamed kakure-ichō (隠れ銀杏 hiding ginkgo?) because according to an Edo period urban legend, a now-famous assassin hid behind it before striking his victim.

...Oh. I wasn't aware the old fella had toppled. I'm glad its bits are thriving. It's around one thousand years old, which is breath-stopping to consider. Very glad I was able to see it whole and proud.

The assassination in question:

Under heavy snow on the evening of February 12, 1219 (Jōkyū 1, 26th day of the 1st month), shogun Minamoto no Sanetomo was coming down from Tsurugaoka Hachimangū's Senior Shrine after assisting to a ceremony celebrating his nomination to Udaijin. His nephew Kugyō, son of second shogun Minamoto no Yoriie, came out from next to the stone stairway of the shrine, then suddenly attacked and assassinated him in the hope to become shogun himself. The killer is often described as hiding behind the giant ginkgo, but no contemporary text mentions the tree, and this detail is likely an Edo era invention first appeared in Tokugawa Mitsukuni's Shinpen Kamakurashi. For his act Kugyō was himself beheaded a few hours later, thus bringing the Seiwa Genji line of the Minamoto clan and their rule in Kamakura to a sudden end.

One thousand years is a long time, but when considering a time line of 270 million years, a handful of centuries is nothing.

(When anthropomorphising Evolution as some sort of deity artisan, for which their every project is a work in project, forever being tinkered with, it's easy to imagine the ginkgo as a work that has sat forgotten on a shelf somewhere for the aeons of the planet's life, gathering dust but still perfectly functional, while Evolution considers the merits of iridescence in plant cells.)

When I spied this wee plant at the Growing Friends' Nursery Sale at the Botanical and Rare Plant Fair, I forgot all the other lovely plants I'd been eyeing off, picked it up, hugged it, and brought it home. A dinosaur plant of my very own! With such fine, healthy leaves, and that rich youthful colour!

I was told I shouldn't be buying trees, stop buying trees, Tessa we do not have any room for trees, but it was mine now. Mine mine mine. 

It has proved to be endlessly entertaining. Fast growing in the current heat, it gobbles up our ridiculously strong sun. Whereas eucalypts appear to have evolved leaves to mitigate the ferocity of the Australian sun (being largely scythe-shaped and hanging long and vertical, so that the high sun mostly hits their edges, and it is the morning and late afternoon sun which they make the most of), the ginkgo holds out its leaves like hands waiting for more. The birds leave it alone. The pests leave it alone. A small spider has made a home in a curl in the lower canopy. 

All the care guides I read indicated that the ginkgo does not take well to transplanting, and does not at all like having its roots disturbed. Moving it into its current pot was anxiety-inducing. I tried my best to remove the entire plug from its original bucket and not shift the roots at all, but that didn't happen. The soil slipped and everything fell apart in my hands, the roots wrenched about and naked and pretty much exactly what I was trying to avoid. Potted it up best I could, and for the next couple of weeks watched it like the natural worry-wort I am. 

I'm not sure what the fuss was about. This plant had exactly zero reaction to being repotted. Possibly its fussiness about its feet was overstated.

It's quite a communicative plant. It gets very, very sad when the soil is dry. It wilts. Not like most other plants, whereby wilting means a drooping of the leaves and stems. No, the ginkgo folds over entirely, like a toddler putting on a show, like a melodramatic pout, like there is no point in going on, I give up, go on without me. Once the soil is wet again, it straightens up within an hour, as if nothing was ever wrong. The leaves don't dry out or crisp up, no colour change, nothing. Just pure drama.

Dad went hunting for some vegetable or fruit he remembers being in the family congee when he was a kid. Asking at a store led him to a vacuum sealed parcel of creamy white orbs, which turned out to be ginkgo nuts. They went into his latest batch of congee. They're similar to fungi and mushrooms in that they have that crisp and firm snap and resistance when being bitten into, but then a smooth buttery texture that follows. It isn't until bitten that they release any flavour, which is distinctly sour. This sourness isn't quite strong enough to be unpleasant, but is none-the-less sour which I associate with being unpleasant, so on the whole, the flavour is quite confusing. 

It makes sense. I'm guessing these nuts developed before the creatures that ate them developed had developed a sophisticated palate which needed to be bribed with delicious flavours, if the tree was even using animals as distribution. Now the ginkgo is all, This is the way I've been cooking my nuts for longer than your species's grandspecies existed. Ain't got time for your tastebuds. Be grateful for the protein and begone.

No one knew if my ginkgo was male or female, so I'll just have to wait and see if we get a home-grown source of ginkgo nuts. 

It is a species that has survived asteroid-impacts, extinction-level events, the end of so many worlds. When I look at young trees I see giants. Already a living fossil, in this scrawny trunk is a future ancient. One day, perhaps my ginkgo will be a behemoth. It has that potential. I will never see it, but it is a dream both the ginkgo and I share.

Green Sticks I Have Known and Loved

There's no accounting for taste. Why we prefer one type of book but not another. Why we keep falling for the same type of person at the expense of so many other types. Why I'm drawn to these odd plants but not those odd plants.

These three stalks belong to the Euphorbia genus, and none of them do much other than be green stalks. I love them.

On the left is what I have hesitantly IDed as  Euphorbia alluaudii. Hesitantly because I bought it as a small cutting at the Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show back in March, and it came with no tag. It was just a funny green stick. In the intervening eight months it has continued to just be a funny green stick. It never puckered for want of water, never shrivelled from too much water, never changed colour with changing light conditions or the shifting seasons. It has seriously done sweet f-all. In fact, it was only in repotting it into the above container that I had any proof it was alive.

Look! It has roots! It was doing something after all!

Plants find their own way to communicate their needs. Well. What they're doing is reacting to their environment and altering their structure to best protect themselves, but it can be a form of communication for the gardener. This plant apparently wants for nothing because it doesn't communicate anything. It's a native of Madagascar (maybe), and I can't imagine Melbourne providing the same climate and soil as Madagascar, but hey, it's happy. So, having transplanted it, I'm going to continue ignoring it.

The middle is Euphorbia debilispina, which did come with a tag, purchased at the yard sale of an award-winning plant grower. A native of southern central Africa, I haven't had it long enough for it to start complaining about the conditions I'm providing. My goal is only ever to not kill my plants.

On the right is Euphorbia antisyphilitica, (ANTI-SYPHILIS?!) which was purchased from the same sale and thankfully tagged. Despite being another nondescript green stick of the Euphorbia, this hails from southern USA to Mexico. I'm expecting it to do not much at all.

They should all do well going in to summer. I intend to leave the pot where it can get full sun and pretty much cook them alive. Hopefully this will get them nicely established before the cold soggy seasons roll around again. 

Why am I drawn to these seriously undramatic plants? I have no idea. They're ridiculous. They're just sticks. Frustratingly vague sticks. Still, I love them, I go stand in front of them with my hands on my hips and purse my lips and curse them for being ridiculously low maintenance and entirely happy.