In this issue: Save the Date… Contents • Next meeting: Monthly Meeting Recap - June ........................ 2 • Wednesday, August 23, 7.30pm August Meeting Teaser: ................................... 5 Plant Profile: ..................................................... 6 Eucalyptus formanii ...................................... 6 Gibberellic acid (GA) ......................................... 8 Upcoming Events ............................................ 10 Contacts:......................................................... 12 Chris Lindorff spoke to us last year on Woodland Birds, including setting up an Upcoming Meetings: area for attracting them. This month, Chris will return and expand on setting up a - September 27 – sanctuary to attract wildlife Bonsai - October 8 – Nature Coming Up... walk thru Brisbane Ranges • Lots of other events, refer to pages 10 and 11 for more… - October 25 – AGM & Flower Table - November 22 – End Of Year & Photo Comp 1 | P a g e Monthly Meeting Recap - June Our first day meeting was held with a result of only 11 members able to attend. I can say with certainty that those who were absent missed out on a fabulous talk by Kathryn FitzGibbon, who is employed by the Melton City Council as a landscape architect. There were plenty of Awww’s as Kathryn showed us her humble beginnings in the garden as she recalled many hours helping her dad as she was growing up. Kathryn continued her love of gardening, formalising it by obtaining a Bachelor of Design and Master of Landscape Architecture at RMIT, although she admitted that it was a course about the ‘feelings’ of plants, and not actually about plants themselves. Her hard work paid off as she was part of a team that won a Gold Medal at the Grand Designs Live Exhibition in 2012 for their structure incorporating succulents. Kathryn then spent 6 months in a Danish prison. Hmmm, this might need further explanation! The Vridsløselille State Prison in Copenhagen was built in 1859. Now a museum, Kathryn was part of a team to re-design gardens using native plants in a showcase throughout the seasons. 2 | P a g e Back home and Kathryn has been involved in revamping the Caroline Springs Library grounds that have, until recently, been looking quite sad. Her approach: The result: Before After (in progress) Not content with this, Kathryn has assisted in creating booklets on tips on how to create different garden types with suggestions on plants, design and functionality. 3 | P a g e And still not to be outdone, she is also creating a legacy in the FMBG, creating a backdrop as part of the amphitheatre, and getting some of the locals involved! 4 | P a g e August Meeting Teaser: Chris Lindorff will expand on his knowledge of creating wildlife sanctuaries in the garden to attract birdlife and animals, and how to capture your visitors with hidden/motion detection cameras. Chris and his family are also heavily involved in “Grow West”, a group who are ‘turning back the tide of environmental degradation, initially by working in an area of 50,000 hectares of land between Bacchus Marsh and Ballan’. http://growwest.com.au/ Don’t feel like cooking dinner before coming to the meeting??? Don’t! Come and join the group and have dinner at Tabcorp Park, it’s a great way to chat with Chris before the meeting. Meeting, 7.30pm at The Willows Dinner, 6pm at Tabcorp Park 5 | P a g e Plant Profile: Eucalyptus formanii The inspiration for this month’s plant profile came from my wanderings through the MBG earlier in the year. Little did I know that research into this plant would require a dictionary and a further article of interest. A glossary is attached for the underlined words. From the websites: Eucalyptus formanii, commonly known as Die-Hardy mallee, Forman's mallee, or feather gum, is a tree that is native to Western Australia. The tree that can have a mallee habit forming a lignotuber and typically grows to a height of 3 to 11 metres (10 to 36 ft) and a width of 3 to 8 metres (10 to 26 ft). The leaves are unusual for a Eucalypt with a very narrow shape with a white to pale gray-green colour and with a wispy appearance. Adult leaves disjunct, basally tapered, dull, and concolorous with obscure lateral veins. The bark is rough grey and fibrous on the trunk but flaky and light grey elsewhere. It blooms during the summer months between December and April producing white-cream flowers. The axillary conflorescence is simple with seven to eleven flowered umbellasters on terete peduncles (see next page). Buds form later that are fusiform with a calyx calyptrate that sheds early. The fruits are cylindrical or hemispherical with a flat or raides disc. It is found on ironstone slopes straddling the eastern Wheatbelt and the Goldfields- Esperance regions of Western Australia between Yilgarn and Menzies where it grows in sandy soils. E formanii is part of a low woodland community. These woodlands cover a substantial part of the base of the Mount Manning Nature Reserve occurring on flat sandy plains in broad valleys with sandy loam soil types. The low woodlands on plains are made up of 10 m (33 ft) high trees over an understorey of Triodia rigidissima. The composition of the flora is complex with several intermediate strata of tall and low shrubs consisting of Grevillea acuaria, Bossiaea walkeri and various species of Eremophila. 6 | P a g e Glossary Disjunct: distinctly separate Concolorous: uniformly coloured Axillary: coming from between the stem and the leaf Conflorescence: of an inflorescence when the overall structure substantially differs from that of the individual branches of the inflorescence Inflorescence: several flowers closely grouped together to form an efficient structured unit; the grouping or arrangement of flowers on a plant Umbellasters: all the individual flower stalks arise in a cluster at the top of the peduncle and are of about equal length Terete: circular in cross-section; more or less cylindrical without grooves or ridges Peduncles: the stalk of an inflorescence (So, from what I can make of this, it is as follows:) Stem Conflorescence Axillary Umbellaster Peduncle Leaf More details: A tree worth growing just for the foliage alone and is drought resistant. It can be used as an ornamental tree, hedge or windbreak and is useful for cut flowers, foliage or fruit. It needs very little maintenance and water, and does well in poor soils. Seed germinates with additional methods with an 83% germination rate. To germinate, soak the seed for 24 hours in a 0.5g/1 litre of Gibberellic acid prior to sowing. This last sentence led to a whole new area of research… 7 | P a g e Gibberellic acid (GA) 1. Gibberellic acid (also called Gibberellin A3, GA, and GA3) is a hormone found in plants and fungi. When purified, it is a white to pale-yellow solid. 2. Plants in their normal state produce low amounts of GA3. It is possible to produce the hormone industrially using microorganisms. It is usually used in concentrations between 0.01 and 10 mg/L. 3. GA was first identified in Japan in 1926, as a metabolic by-product of the plant pathogen Gibberella fujikuroi (thus the name), which afflicts rice plants; fujikuroi-infected plants develop bakanae ("foolish seedling"), which causes them to grow so much taller than normal that they die from no longer being sturdy enough to support their own weight. 4. Gibberellins have a number of effects on plant development. They can stimulate rapid stem and root growth, induce mitotic division in the leaves of some plants, and increase seed germination rate. 5. Gibberellic acid is sometimes used in laboratory and greenhouse settings to trigger germination in seeds that would otherwise remain dormant. It is also widely used in the grape-growing industry as a hormone to induce the production of larger bundles and bigger grapes, especially Thompson seedless grapes. In the Okanagan and Creston valleys, it is also used as a growth replicator in the cherry industry. It is used on Clementine Mandarin oranges, which may otherwise cross-pollinate with other citrus and grow undesirable seeds. Applied directly on the blossoms as a spray, it allows for Clementines to produce a full crop of fruit without seeds. 6. GA has increased the total yield in greenhouse tomato crops both as a result of increased fruit set and more rapid growth of the fruit. 7. Hybridizing. Pollination within self-incompatible clones and between closely related species may sometimes be forced by the application of GA and cytokinin to the blooms at the time of hand pollination. 8. Increased growth. GA applied near the terminal bud of trees may increase the rate of growth by stimulating more or less constant growth during the season. In a Department of Agriculture experiment, the GA was applied as a 1% paste in a band around the terminal bud of trees. Treatment was repeated three times during the summer. Walnut tee growth was 8.5 ft. for treated trees, 1.5 ft. for untreated trees. 9. Frost protection. Spraying fruit trees at full-blossom or when the blossoms begin to wither can offset the detrimental effects of frost. 10. Root formation. GA inhibits the formation of roots in cuttings. 8 | P a g e Gibberellic acid (GA) is used in citrus orchards to manipulate flowering and fruit development and reduce the incidence and/or severity of some physiological disorders that occur due to environmental conditions. Its effectiveness depends on application at the right concentration and right times. Reason for use There are four key reasons for using GA on citrus: • reducing the severity and incidence of albedo breakdown • reducing the severity and incidence of watermark (mostly on Imperial mandarin) • reducing the severity and incidence of oleocellosis • improving rind quality.