AUSTRALIAN NATIVE PLANTS SOCIETY (AUSTRALIA) INC GREVILLEA STUDY GROUP NEWSLETTER NO. 114 – OCTOBER 2019 GSG NSW Programme 2019 2 | EDITORIAL Leader: Peter Olde, p 0432 110 463 | e [email protected] For details about the NSW chapter please contact Peter, contact via email is preferred. 4 | OBITUARY VALE MERV HODGE (24 NOVEMBER 1933 GSG Vic Programme 2019 – 13 JULY 2019) Leader: Neil Marriott, 693 Panrock Reservoir Rd, Stawell, Vic. 3380 p 03 5356 2404 or 0458 177 989 | e [email protected] Contact Neil for queries about program for the year. Any members who would TAXONOMY like to visit the official collection, obtain cutting material or seed, assist in its 5 | maintenance, and stay in our cottage for a few days are invited to contact Neil.| COLVILL’S CATALOGUE AND GREVILLEA NAMES See page 3 for details of Easter Working Bee 19-23 April. GSG SE Qld Programme 2019/2020 10 | GREVILLEA NEWS We gather at 09:30 for shared morning tea and a meeting at 10:00. We usually GREVILLEA SQUIRESIAE have a BYO lunch about midday. Visitors are always welcome. For more info or to THANK YOU MATT HURST check venues etc please contact: Ross Reddick on 0405 510 459 or Denis Cox on (07) 5546 8590 as changes can occur. ON GREVILLEA BATRACHIOIDES NEW MEMBERS Sunday, 24 November 2019 venue: Garden of Adrian & Gail Wockner, 5 Horizon Court, Highfields; via Toowoomba. Their garden ¬was a ‘display’ garden during the recent ‘Carnival of Flowers’ and they support a worthy charity with the admission fees and afternoon tea stall. 12 | IN THE WILD DRIVING OVER GREVILLEAS Sunday, 23 February 2020 GREVILLEA METAMORPHA venue: Garden of Denis Cox and Jan Glazebrook at 87 Daintree Drive, Logan Village. GREVILLEA PARVIFLORA AT LAKE MACQUARIE Sunday, 26 April 2020 venue: Dave and Catherine Madden at Nightjar Ridge Natives Nursery; a wholesale nursery in the Gold Coast hinterland. 16 | IN YOUR GARDEN NOTE ON ROOT-SUCKERING Illawarra Grevillea Park NEXT OPEN DAYS 2020 May 2 & 3, 9 & 10 18 | PROPAGATION Opening hrs are 10am – 4pm SEED COLLECTING TIPS Location FROM BOB DIXON The Park is located at the rear of Bulli Showground, Princess Highway, Bulli. Admission $5 adults, children with adults are free 19 | FINANCIALS email [email protected] or visit illawarragrevilleapark.com.au EDITORIAL A FEW WORDS FROM PETER Peter Olde, NSW At the risk of repeating myself, something has to be done! represents a major disjunct population. It seems the species Everyone is aware of the extinction crisis facing our animals is thriving here and there are some good numbers. but no-one is much thinking about the plants and the natural environment. I am talking about rubbish dumping One thing I must recommend to you is RFS Buddy, an app. in natural bushland and the increasing risk posed by feral for your mobile phone. It gives amazingly accurate grid co- animals and weeds. Nothing seems to be happening. ordinates for wherever you happen to be. And it’s free. RFS stands for Regional Fire Service, and it is used by our Of course, there are huge fines for dumping rubbish illegally volunteer fire fighters to pin-point fire locations but it also but there are almost zero prosecutions. Surely it should be works for plant locations. If anyone knows of a GPS app a criminal offence. Everywhere you go, just a little off the where you can enter the co-ordinates and it will direct you main track, you find mattresses, furniture, refrigerators, to the location, like the little lady in MAPS on my iphone, television sets, rubbish of all kinds. I enclose a recent photo please let me know. taken near Newcastle where the problem is particularly bad. Exclusion fences are being ever so slowly erected but there There was only one response to my offer in the last seems to be little concern for areas that are not officially newsletter to reactivate the Grevillea Study Group in New conserved. They are being polluted, degraded and become South Wales. The offer still stands but presumably there is less attractive as additional conservation zones when this little interest. happens. I have to say it is a very depressing state of affairs. And finally, please give some thought to volunteering. Of course, councils know it well. There are signs everywhere We need a new seed bank co-ordinator, following the but they are ineffective it seems. retirement of Matt Hurst. I received a phone call recently from an enthusiastic lady who once helped me with my research into Grevillea rosmarinifolia in Gippsland, Victoria. We located lots of plants on the Crooked River, some on very steep land and this was instrumental in resolving the taxonomy of this complex species. The subject of her phone call was to enquire whether I retained any photos of the plants because all the plants we studied are gone, consumed by deer! Deer are an emerging serious problem about which little is being Grevillea endlicheriana fruit exterior showing style attached done almost as bad as rabbits. They are big animals and eat a lot of food. Recently I entered the Blue Mountains National Park west of Mulgoa, just metres from the car park, where I was confronted by three goats. They were completely unafraid, the buck facing me until we got within around 5 metres. Three goats you say! I saw mobs of over 100 out in north west Western Australia, where they were busy parlaying the desert vegetation into manure. What about the camels destroying nearly every water-hole in outback desert country. Unseen and with romantic notions attached, they are displacing even the kangaroos. The birds are nearly all gone because of the feral cats. The desert is silent, not chattering as you would expect from an untouched area. Now they tell us insect populations and fish populations are crashing. Woe betide. Surely the environment must come first. Drastic action is needed. I received an email recently from Angus Stewart with a photo of Grevillea involucrata, asking for its identification. When I enquired where it was taken, it turned out to be in Grevillea endlicheriana fruit cut open to reveal seeds the Dragon Rocks Nature Reserve. During my recent trip to the west I made it my business to chase this up because it NEWSLETTER NO. 114 – OCTOBER 2019 2 OBITUARY VALE MERV HODGE (24 NOVEMBER 1933 – 13 JULY 2019) Peter Olde, NSW Many of the plants that Merv developed have entered the horticultural lexicon. Apart from the aforementioned, there were Grevillea ‘Firesprite’, G. ‘Goldilocks’, G. ‘Goliath’, G. ‘Jory’, G. Jo-Lo’, G. ‘Pink Ice’, G. ‘Pink Midget’, G. ‘Strawberry Blonde’, and a host of others whose introduction he facilitated. Many of his own were open-pollinated seedlings that came up in his garden. The Hodges participated in several Open Gardens and their magnificent garden, replete with a huge Grevillea collection of new introductions, featured on ‘Burkes Backyard’ TV Programme in 2002 and in the local papers. Another of Merv’s deserved claims to fame was the ‘Mummy Graft’, a technique for grafting native plants that he invented and promoted widely, teaching numerous interested parties the technique on the back porch. Nothing would offend him The recent passing of Mervyn William Hodge in his eighty more than if someone accidentally failed to acknowledge sixth year should not have come as a surprise but it did. He this discovery, or worse still, unintentionally claim any credit died unexpectedly after suffering a blackout and driving into for it. Merv himself was introduced to grafting by Harvey a tree at his home. During a short stint in hospital he was Shaw but took it on, experimented and used it on the plants diagnosed with a calcified aortic valve and preparations were he produced in the little home nursery that he started after being made for a replacement. However, he died peacefully retiring from a technician’s career working on telephone during the night. exchanges and their supervision. He also pioneered grafted brachychitons, pimeleas, eremophilas and chamelauciums. Merv at the time was actively caring for his wife Olwyn at their home in Logan Reserve, Queensland. She has been You cannot speak about Merv without mentioning diagnosed with dementia and can no longer care for herself. photography. His flower photography was inspirational, Imagining Merv as a carer comes with some difficulty. I went perfect. He was the driving force behind the Horticultural on an extended field trip to Western Australia with him and Guide to Australian Plants, information leaflets issued by the others in 1988 in which cooking duties were alternately Queensland Region, both as author and photographer. Many shared. Merv had been so spoiled by Olwyn during their long of his photos were donated for use in the Grevillea Book. In marriage that he had never got his head around even boiling 1994, in Volume 1 of that book, Grevillea hodgei was named water. So his later years marked a great transformation. He in his honour. He was also knowledgeable about other genera took the only tip I ever gave him ‘If you can read, you can including orchids. Merv received the Australian Plants Award cook”. And so he did. And cleaned, and tidied and organised in 2009 for his contribution in the amateur category. He was for many years. He declared towards his last days that ‘no- a life member of Native Plants Queensland. He was a selfless, one can look after her better than me’. They were devoted knowledgeable, generous person. The Hodges were also to each other from the time when they first met, in the generous hosts.