We've been podding, stripping and winnowing seeds for most of the day, in preparation for the sowings we've planned for the coming weeks. I pulled-apart the Mexican hawthorn fruits I found at Dunedin last weekend and got the seeds from those and will put them into a soil mix tomorrow.
Here are the pods from which we harvested hundreds of hard leguminous seeds that will grow into trees. If you've a mind to try to guess what they are...
* Up-date and definitive answer (I hope) comes from Peta, beside whose home the mother tree grew...
Peta says,
Hi Robert
Here's the positive ID from a website
Cape Leeuwin Wattle
(Paraserianthes lophantha)
Description: Spreading tall shrub or small tree with dark green,
feathery leaves, and greenish-yellow bottlebrush-shaped flowers. Long,
flat green seedpods turn dark brown in summer. Seeds round, black, hard.
It grows, or did as it's been taken out by council, about 8m from the
edge of the harbour, in pure sand, in the full force of all the winds
that we get and has survived much salt laden winds. A real survivor!
cheers
Peta
20 comments:
Are they tree lupins? As in yellow flower weed. Lupinus arboreus or something close to that. If they are, surely your not going to grow them into trees are you?
God morning Kylie. Good guess too, but those aren't lupinus arboreus.
Coming from a maritime area, you'll have those growing wild and I sense you don't value tree lupins much :-)
We use them a lot for quick growing wind shelter, soil improvement, carbon capture and grass suppression. Their big advantage is that the seeds are free :-) Nobody wants them you see...
The pods pictured are from a different legume, a true tree, one that I've not seen this far south ...yet. I'll put up the name after lunch.
On the ngatimoti theme I'd guess them to be Robinia pseudoacacia
Ah Nick-with-the-inside-running!
Nope.
Got these from Portabello.
Kowhai?
Nope Deborah.
Exotic tree.
Not tagaste, tree lucerne is it? Most of mine got badly frosted this winter a hundred km or so north : (
On the other hand if it were Siberian Pea I would be overjoyed...
Not tree lucerne southernrata, though mine are growing well, un-touched by frost here in the deep south (it's mild in Riverton).
Nor Siberian peas, though we have an extensive collection of rare peas. Do you know the botanical name of the one you seek?
Acacia melanoxylon - grows like a weed in my property. Risers popup wherever you cut the roots. I do note however, without the intervention of any greenwash.
No PM, not that tree. Similar seeds, though without the 'bits' attached.
Different family altogether.
How do you prevent the prolific seeding of tree lupins? Just keep on top of flowers? Where do you find the time?
English garden books laud what I consider a weed but I too have planted as a green manure crop in the past for the same reasons, free and beneficial. My soil is like a beach...sand...great drainage until they clear felled our lovely Motupohue, now I have moss on the verge where it has never been before. Any tricks you know to get rid of it? Naturally obviously:-)
I might try the lupin windbreak this year, very exposed here and those spring winds will be coming!
Kylie - I don't try to prevent the lupins from seeding, I welcome it. They are easy to pull at any rate. They are good as a windbreak 'line' but even better spread across the field, rather than just along the edge. They are short-lived and easy to mulch down when you've tired of them. All that carbon, pulled from the air and sequestered as wood. Once that's in the soil, everything benefits. There are a lot of other very useful lupins too. I could give you some edible ones (white seeded). Those clear-feller fellas have really annoyed you, eh!
Hmm, tree medic?
Southern rata may be looking for the siberian pea tree, the seeds of which I have and am preparing to grow this spring. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caragana_arborescens
Nick, when you have a few to spare and I am a bit better organised, I would love to try and grow some Siberian Pea seeds. Great chook fodder, apparently.
So no-one has identified the mystery seeds yet, Robert?
Still reckon it's a type of wattle.
Sorry, I've been at the rugger! Scotland supporters team were playing Colac Bay in what might just be the best game of the Rubber Wool Cup! I'm writing up the report now. Got some great photos, I reckon (the Scottish won, 50 - 10, sort-of, maybe, around that.)
The pictured pods are from...
...Albizia or Cape Wattle - Albizia lopantha (syn. Paraserianthes lopantha)
(at least, that's what I've believed til now. Anyone who thinks differently is welcome to comment. I've got an email sent to the woman who gave me the seeds, to confirm what my memory tells me but that function being what it is - variable - I'll confirm my claim when that comes through.)
PMofNZ has to be the surprise of the day - who'd have thought ;-)
Yes RG, you could be very surprised what I get up to in the way of gardening. But as you probably have noticed, I take an extremely dim view of unwashed ferals outside of my fences looking to exert their unwanted influences within my property. Especially the ones that infest local government. And no, I do not cultivate anything illegal.
PM - do you have a 'thing' about bathing?
Why does being unwashed offend you so much?
You use the phrase often.
Are there 'unwashed ferals' in your local council?
They're not commonly seen at that level, imho.
*see up-date
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