By Beatrice Hawkins
I just love the way our native trees regenerate after fire. The look of the shoots so quickly on the blackened trunks gives hope of a speedy recovery. The variety of colours in the new shoots is so beautiful, from bright lime green to a darker green with red tips and many other colours, depending on the variety of eucalypt and the area in which it is growing.
I picked some beautiful blue grey new shoots from a burnt mugga ironbark at the weekend. I love the look and smell of the bunch of leaves in an earthenware vase on the dining table. The whole house just smells so great when I come home after it has been shut up all day – so refreshing, so Australian! But anyone who reads this column is well aware that I’m a sucker for the Australian bush!
Mugga Ironbark/eucalyptus sideroxylon, is also known as red ironbark and is native to the eastern states of Australia. It can apparently have white or pink flowers – it is the pink flowering variety that I know, with its slender blue grey leaves. The new growth has lovely round leaves that mature to the slender leaves with which we are familiar.
Allan Cunningham recorded the name in Thomas Mitchell’s Journal of an “Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia” in 1848 but did not include a description. The first description of this lovely tree is in 1887 –“sideroxylon” comes from the Greek words meaning iron and wood – very accurate given its density.
It is a very valuable tree yielding nectar for honey production, essential oils and very durable timber. It is hard and dense, burns really well and was favoured by bakers in wood fired ovens. It is dense and fine grained and polishes beautifully, so is used widely now as a furniture timber. If however, like my mother was, you are prone to rearranging furniture, it is very heavy! The density is about 1150kg per square metre. It is also ideal for heavy engineering work, railway sleepers and fence posts. Posts will last in the ground for 100 years so make sure your fence is where you want it to be! Due to its density it is the only species of eucalypt that will not float!
It provides great habitat and nectar for native birds and is one of the most reliable honey producers.
Beautiful tree, beautiful leaves, spectacular black/dark brown bark, beautiful white through to pink flowers – what more could we want for a medium sized tree for a large garden – one more I would plant if I had the room and a gardener to take care of it all!!
My lawn is recovering quickly and well. For all its faults, kikuyu does recover quickly, especially at this time of the year and certainly gives me exercise mowing it! Unfortunately it also tends to send shoots into the garden but a paint brush and a little weed killer takes care of that rather quickly.
I am even getting excited about the prospect of maybe being able to get my proposed corner garden under way when water restrictions are eased some more.
I planted some more vincas in a couple of other garden beds this week so that next summer I should have colour right across the front of my block regardless of the weather and even if I am home or travelling.
The other wonder plant, of course, is old fashioned white Alyssum/Sweet Alice. It has come up thickly everywhere and will be filling in corners with a cloud of white very quickly. Once more lovely childhood memories from a neighbour’s garden.
I am also pleased to see the beautiful cream spires of bells on the Yuccas everywhere around town. They are a bit earlier than I am used to but flowering has probably been prompted by the rain received recently.
Yuccas are far from a favourite with me unless well cared for and then they are a delight. The leaves are sharp and painful and often dangerously at eye level. The dead leaves look unsightly. They certainly have their place and the flowers are really lovely but maybe they need pruning/lopping a lot more often than they seem to get in most situations.
I walked outside at night recently and was amazed at the beautiful perfume from the gardenia that has survived the dry and is blooming beautifully since the rain. I must have planted it in just the right spot, more by luck than good management or knowledge, as it seems to be thriving. I think I’ll try my luck again and plant another one near my front door as soon as we are again allowed to water gardens. At present there is a rather sad looking lavender there. I do love lavender and will plant some more in other spots, again, when we are allowed to water gardens!
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