Tendrils Newsletter Issue 12, March 2020 Australian Botanical Artists Regional Network (ABARN) Tendrils Australian Botanical Artists Regional Network (ABARN) Spotted Gun Forest, Clyde River National Park, Feb.2020. Photo by Dr Kevin Mills Editor’s note Tendrils is an online newsletter distributed Contents Page across Australia. Commenced in 2017 by artists from Bowral, Canberra, the Shoalhaven and From the Editor 2 Sydney, it aims to share ideas and information in After the Fires 3 regional and metropolitan locations, among those who share a passion for the botanical art genre. News from the Regions 5 We welcome news and articles from individuals Exhibitions 9 and groups across the country. You are Our Botanical Legacy 10 encouraged to advertise workshops, events and exhibitions free of charge. May Gibbs – a botanical beginning 10 Teacher of Plant Lore - Winifred Curtis 14 Please just send text contributions in a regular email. Images need to be jpegs that are easily Scientific Names of Plants 16 emailed. Book Review 19 Enquiries and contributions to Cathryn Coutts, Workshops and Events 19 at: [email protected] Websites 19 Issues are published in March, June, September and November. Deadline for contributions is the Dear Readers: The format of sections used in previous issues of Tendrils is changing. This is to allow us more first Friday of each month of publication. flexibility to publish the wide variety of ideas and views that readers are sending in. I hope you enjoy the new format and articles in this issue. Cathryn Coutts, Editor. 1 Tendrils Newsletter Issue 12, March 2020 Australian Botanical Artists Regional Network (ABARN) From the Editor… Why, you might ask, am I talking about this in a magazine for botanical artists? The reason is that I’m sure you’ve all heard the saying ‘may you I want to encourage all of you to reflect on the live in interesting times’. To describe the time need to protect and conserve our native flora, we are currently living in as ‘interesting’ hardly regardless of the plants you like to paint. I’ve seems fitting. Together we have just lived mentioned in past issues of Tendrils that as through a summer I’m sure you will all botanical artists we have the capacity, through remember to the end of your days. After the bush our work, to communicate important messages to was devastated by fire, with such appalling loss the general public. of human life, property, fauna and flora, we got the rains. Marvellous soaking rains. After the Perhaps some of you may be inspired to go into rains, the virus… nearby bushland and observe what is occurring after the fire. There are some amazing things to A bit of good news out of all these disasters is see, which would make wonderful subjects for a that with the rains came the regrowth – showing painting. Perhaps you could focus your next how amazing our native flora can be. exhibition on bushland regrowth. I regularly work with local bush regeneration The foliage emerging on regenerating plants is teams, here in the NSW Southern Highlands. It’s often in beautiful colours - pinks, reds, yellows, our job to notice things, and be able to bright greens, while the seed capsules we love to selectively remove invasive plants that should draw in all their marvelous textures and shapes, not be growing on a site, so that the native flora burst open after fire. Images of regenerating can survive and flourish. plants are very rarely seen in botanical art. Now Over time I have become fascinated by the way is your chance to show the wider community the the bush can regrow, once its given a chance. I beauty and wonder of what actually happens. watch the plants come back to life. I see little seedlings emerge from the leaf litter, new shoots on the trunks of trees. It’s truly wonderful to see. Bush recovering from fire near Mittagong, NSW. Photo Cathryn Coutts Regrowth after fire near Mittagong NSW. Photo Cathryn Coutts Some species are more vigorous than others and Fund-raising exhibitions to assist recovery in they tend to dominate the early stages of communities devastated by the fires is another regrowth. The forest shown above, was important contribution you can make with your photographed about two months after the fire, art work. just north of Mittagong, NSW (south of Sydney My interest in bush regeneration after fire has on the Hume Highway). This area is an prompted me to lead this issue with an article by important koala habitat, so seeing it regenerate is one of our local experts, Dr Kevin Mills, noted particularly heartening. botanist and author. I have published Part 1 of it 2 Tendrils Newsletter Issue 12, March 2020 Australian Botanical Artists Regional Network (ABARN) here, with his permission. The article was first evolved to ensure the next generation of the published in Budawangia, Issue No. 95 Feb. species is assured. Plants either survive the fire 2020. This is an E-newsletter for all those and have the ability to grow back from plant interested in the native plants of the NSW South parts that withstand fire or they die completely Coast. Part 2 is to be published in Budawangia and regrow from seeds stored in the soil. Seeds next month. and spores blown in from patches of unburnt bush also play a part, but this is not discussed After the fires - regeneration in the here. All photographs below were taken west of bush and how plants survive - Part 1 Nowra (NSW) in mid-February. By Dr Kevin Mills Plants that survive fire (All photographs by the author) Most trees and some other woody plants survive fire and are able to regrow from the trunks and The Australian bush burns and has done so for thicker branches that remain viable. These millions of years. Fires are not novel or unusual species may have thick bark to protect the for summer along the east coast of Australia. It is underlying live tissue, the outer bark sometimes the intensity and extent of fires this season that is being shed following the fire. Such species unprecedented, as is the length of the fire season. include most eucalypts and Banksia serrata. A As I write this, flooding rains are falling on few ferns have thick trunks that can survive most many of the fire grounds, another inevitable fires, such as Cyathea australis and Todea weather event following severe drought in this barbara. Other species that regrow from thick country of contrasting weather, made more trunks include Macrozamia spp. and unpredictable through the changing climate. Xanthorrhoea spp. Some species, losing all of their aerial parts, survive by regrowing from Inevitable also, is that the bush will grow back, underground root systems, such as rhizomes and as it has always done. However, this time things lignotubers. will be a bit different. While it has rained and regeneration will occur relatively quickly, the extent of the fires and their intensity mean that on many sites what grows back is going to be different to what grew before the fires. Some types of vegetation are going to take a very long time to recover their floristic and structural integrity, particularly rainforest. Close to whole populations of some rare plants, and animals, have been destroyed in the fire and how strongly these species recover no one knows yet. Monitoring is critical to determine the ultimate fate of some threatened species. Much work has already been done on this issue, see: https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/topics/park s-reserves-and-protected-areas/fire/park- recovery-and-rehabilitation https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/research- Epicormic growth on Sydney Peppermint Eucalyptus piperita and-publications/publications-search/wildlife- Shoots in the trunk of the tree grow quickly after and-conservation-bushfire-recovery-immediate- fire, keeping the tree alive and allowing for the response. canopy branches to re-grow leaves. The epicormic shoots eventually die. Eucalypts have This piece is about how plants recover after fire, a second strategy, which is to release seeds from exploring the ways in which strategies have 3 Tendrils Newsletter Issue 12, March 2020 Australian Botanical Artists Regional Network (ABARN) their woody capsules, many of which survive a most mallees to survive in their highly fire-prone fire, germinating soon after a fire to grow environment. unhindered on a bare ground. Paperbarks, Melaleuca species can also re-sprout from shoots in the trunk. While the leaves of Burrawang Macrozamia communis (below) and Grass Trees Xanthorrhoea spp. (also below), are incinerated in the fire, new shoots, protected inside the woody trunk, sprout soon after the fire. These species also flower and seed after the fire. The Burrawang plants produce large cones, the Grass Trees a tall spike. Nowra Mallee Ash Eucalyptus langleyi Ettrema Mallee Eucalyptus sturgissiana Ettrema Mallee Eucalyptus sturgissiana (above) responds to being burnt in a similar way to the Nowra Mallee Ash. Old stems are killed, to be replaced by a new generation of stems. Burrawang Macrozamia communis Other species seen exhibiting a similar response, that are growing from underground root stock, in the same location include Banksia spinulosa, Lambertia formosa, Callistemon citrinus and Hakea dactyloides Grass Trees Xanthorrhoea spp. Nowra Mallee Ash Eucalyptus langleyi (below) produces new shoots soon after fire. All of the original stems are killed by fire, the plant renewing itself by sending up new stems from Common Bracken Pteridium esculentum the underground lignotuber. Many of these The new shoots of the hardy fern Common shoots will eventually die back, leaving a few to Bracken Pteridium esculentum grow from an replace the dead stems.