Rescuing A Little Daisy
I met one of the Australian Plant Society members at the garden that is going to be bulldozed. We had to make an educated guess as to where the damage is going to be done. There are a lot of plants involved in the area.
One of the first and easiest tasks was to dig up a little daisy, Brachsycome formosa.
Brachyscome formosa
This is quite a small plant which multiplies by suckering. I have probably not given it the correct name. The Australian Daisy Study Group book on Brachyscomes calls this plant Brachyscome affinity formosa, meaning it is like it (known as Pilliga Daisy) but not quite. This one has a pretty mauve flower whereas Pilliga Daisy is cerise pink. It sends up new shoots away from the original plant. It is remarkably hardy. It survives by dying back during the heat of the summer, reappearing after autumn rains. We found dozens of little plants, some of which we potted with a view to relocating in the garden and others to pot at home as insurance. Considering the low rainfall here, this little plant is worth trying.
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Senecio lautus (pinnatifolius) Variable Groundsel
Senecio lautus (pinnatifolius) Coastal Form
This is a deep yellow daisy common around here. The seed germinates readily and the flowers create a delightful display. They are generally an annual but some can persist as a perennial if the season has been good. A good season like we had last year saw masses of the plants and a great floral display. Nowhere near the same number of plants this year but those that are there are beginning to flower.
We saw some of these plants along the board walk at St Kilda the other day. There is a form that grows here known as the ‘Mallee’ form subspecies dissectifolia. The one at St Kilda would be the coastal form.
They grow to a height of 40-60cm. They need full sun and good drainage. There is also a Forest form which grows in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. This form grows to 1m tall by about 80cm wide, with large leaves 4-15cm long. Tip pruning produces a bushier plant.
I think these would be great as a bedding plant in gardens. They flower for months.
Olearia magniflora
Olearia magniflora
I do like daisies. All sorts of daisies, including those that are not native to Australia. It was with excitement that I noticed the dark mauve flowers on my small Olearia magniflora, with some buds still to open. Mine doesn’t do as well as those we saw along the side of the road on the way back to Meribah in SA, after an excursion in Murray-Sunset National Park in Victoria. We call this park ‘Sunset’ as it was known by that name to the locals near where husband lived as a child. The Victorian Border could be seen from the property.
Olearia magniflora is a small shrub to about a metre high and half a metre wide. It seems to grow in the dappled shade of mallee trees. Even though this is growing in a relatively tough environment, they are not the easiest to grow in a garden situation. Many of these plants resent too much moisture and exposure to wild winds. Hardy is a word that has different meanings to people depending on where they live.
Everlasting Daisy Seeds
I found this article on the ABC Web site. Rain is needed to germinate these lovely plants or a sprinkler if allowed. Many areas in Australia are in drought and extra water for sprinkling is not available.
Everlastings lasting all year round.
Thursday, 24 August 2006
Presenter: Sian Gard
The Midwest and wheatbelt is famous around Australia for the wildflower season. Carpets of colourful flowers usually cover the ground from August to October, but not this year. The drought has considerably reduced the number of wildflowers.
What if you could have wildflowers in your very own garden, all year round?
Rob and Jen Warburton of Kojonup have turned the idea of growing wildflowers where you live into a growing business of selling everlasting seeds. Rob says the business came about, almost by accident ” We had a fellow collecting native seeds on our property on 200 hundred acres of bush we’ve got and just as a bi-product he sort of said, heres a kilo of seed why don’t you see if you can grow these things commercially, there’s a bit of a market for it”
Do these beautiful flowers need much care and attention when it comes to popping them in the garden? Not according to Rob ” we get the seeds and throw them on the ground, like you should do, like it happens in nature”
But with the size of the seeds and the amount of flowers that could spring up, you would think that making the everlasting seeds profitable and viable would be a labour intensive chore.
” Eventually the everlastings came up and we thought how are we going to harvest them? Says Rob ” I sort of then worked out a way for mechanically harvesting them, so by the time I had harvested them and put them through several process of cleaning them, we came out with quite a clean product. We were able to sell that and that was about five years ago”
There are hundreds or maybe even thousands of different types of flowers in the world to plant in your garden, but according to Rob what makes the everlasting or paper daises stand out is its uniqueness.
” There a long flowering annual, they come in lots of different colours. We grow the pink and white variety and also the pink variety, which is a very dark red sort of pink colour with a yellow centre, and some of them have a black centre, which is quite stunning as well. They grow through the winter months and flower mostly through the spring ” but as Rob explains these flowers can bring delight all year round “they can be grown all year, we have grown them in patches in November and they have flowered throughout the summer”
The pretty but very simple everlasting is not only a flower that is found in the Midwest and wheatbelt and admired by tourists, it’s a flower, which according to Rob is gaining popularity in the celebration of an everlasting union, marriage.
” We’ve had people who have picked the flowers and dried them, they’ve used them as table displays, in the bouquets themselves and we know a girl just locally who is very keen, who’s having a wedding in December, to come out and pick some flowers and dry them for table arrangements”
Brachyscome angustifolia hybrid
No Comments »28th June, 2006; Category: Daisies
Here is an example of a photograph of one of the Brachyscome species that I grow. Typically the colour has not been reproduced correctly. This hybrid daisy has flowers that are nearly a cerise pink.
Brachyscome angustifolia hybrid
It seems to be a hardy plant which suckers readily. It tends to die back during the heat of summer, to reappear as the cooler weather arrives and watering is resumed or rain falls. It flowers for a couple of months. I am not sure of its frost tolerance as the plants are in a fairly sheltered spot to protect them from the high temperatures during the summer.
The daisy garden bed which I began a few years ago needs to be re-organised as it was n
meant to be a show case and a test garden for the pH of the soil and heat and frost tolerance.