Seed Collection

The following article is courtesy of Lyn Ellis, many thanks Lyn!

Lyn Ellis and Murray McCracken ran a local native plant nursery, Currajuggle Creek Nursery, near Mongarlowe for 20 years and a lot of the windbreaks and plantings you see around the Braidwood and Bungendore district are planted from their tube stock.

The first topic covered is how to identify the more common native trees and shrubs that are fairly easy to grow in the district, and how to collect their seed.

The next article in this series is on propagation, follow this link to read that.

USEFUL REFERENCES FOR IDENTIFICATION

Native Trees and Shrubs of South-eastern Australia by Leon Costermans. Lansdown Publishing Pty Ltd.

Forest Trees of Australia by D. J. Boland, M. I. H. Brooker, G. M. Chippendale, N. Hall, B. P. M. Hyland, R. D. Johnson, D. A. Kleinig, and J. D. Turner. Published by Thomas Nelson Aust. and CSIRO.
A Field Guide to Eucalypts by M. I. H. Brooker and D. A. Kleinig. Inkata Press
Bottlebrushes, Paperbarks and Tea Trees by John W. Wrigley and Murray Fagg. Angus and Robertson
Acacias of Southeast Australia by Terry Tame. Kangaroo Press.
Grassland Flora. A field guide for the Southern Tablelands. By David Eddy, Dave Mallinson, Rainer Rehwinkel and Sarah Sharp.
Woodland Flora by Sarah Sharp, Rainer Rehwinkel, Dave Mallinson and David Eddy. Published by Friends of Grassland.
Online – Flora of Australia , Dep’t of Environment and Energy; PlantNET NSW Flora; Atlas of Living Australia.
Currajuggle Creek Consulting. Lyn Ellis and Murray McCracken. Ph. 0401 502 101 lyn.ellis.20@gmail.com

Eucalyptus melliodora

Eucalyptus bridgesiana

Acacia rubida

Acacia mearnsii

Identification

Scientific names of species will be used in this article as well as the common names. The scientific name of a plant consists of firstly the Genus eg Eucalyptus or Acacia etc, and then the species name eg Eucalyptus pauciflora or Acacia rubida. Common names are easier to remember but can be less reliable. For example Eucalyptus pauciflora is commonly known as Snow Gum, Cabbage Gum or White Sallee and there seems to be a different type of Red Gum in most districts. But when using common names within the local area people will usually know what you mean.

If you can learn to easily identify the most common Genera it is just one more step to get to the species level of identification. There are a range of good books listed at the end of this article that are very useful references. There are some online sites such as the Dep’t of Environment and Energy’s Flora of Australia, PlantNET NSW Flora and Atlas of Living Australia, that may also be helpful in identifying native plants. This article concentrates on the identification of trees and shrubs. For the ground covers and grasses there are two great little field guides, Grassland Flora and Woodland Flora, that are very easy to use, and you can usually identify plants from a photo and description in these books. When using a botanical reference book, it is good to have one finger in the glossary to be able to understand the language used in the description of particular plants.

Some common local Genera in this district are Eucalyptus, Acacia, Casuarina, Leptospermum, Callistemon, Melaleuca, Kunzea, Banksia, Bursaria, Prostanthera, Daviesia, Lomatia and Hakea.

The most important things to observe and sample to identify any plant are:

Size, growth habit and where in the landscape it is growing
Observe the bark
Collect a sample of leaves, flower buds and fruit

I will now outline in a bit more detail the features you need to observe to be able to identify species of two of the most common genera, the Eucalypts and Acacias.

Eucalypts

1. Observe

Size, growth habit and where in the landscape it is growing

Has it one main trunk or is it a mallee with multi stems?

Is it growing in a valley or drainage line, swampy area, on a slope or on a ridge?

Is it naturally occurring, or has it been planted and may be a species not endemic to the area?

2. Bark

Eucalypts can sometimes be easily classified according to their type of bark.

Trees with smooth bark are called Gums. Often white but also green, grey or red or splotches of these colours at different times of the year. The dead bark is shed annually, and this accumulates around the base of the tree. Many gums shed their bark in small to medium sized pieces but the Ribbon Gum, Eucalyptus viminalis sheds it in distinctive long strips that can accumulate around the base and in the forks of branches. They may also have a rough basal stocking, chop marks or scribbles. Scribbles on the bark are usually species specific but may vary from district to district. We have 3 species locally that have scribbles. Euc. pauciflora or Snow Gum, Euc rossii or Scribbly Gum and Euc. fraxinoides or White Ash.
Peppermints have a rough bark with interlocking fibres and the upper branches are smooth. On old mature trees the bark is more deeply furrowed at the base of the trunk.
Stringybarks have a rough bark made up of long course fibres that can become deeply and widely furrowed at the base of older trees. Their rough bark is retained to the smaller branches.
Box trees have a rough bark that is short fibred and moderately thin. It may break into thick flakes.
Ironbarks have thick, hard and deeply furrowed dark rough bark.

Some trees are harder to group according to their bark but the most important thing for identification is to take note of what it looks like. Is it smooth or rough? How is it shed? Has it got scribbles? Is rough bark retained to the smallest branches or are the small upper branches smooth?

3. Leaves

Eucalypts have juvenile, intermediate and adult leaves that may be very different in their form, or similar. Seedlings move quickly from their first few seedling leaves to having juvenile foliage which will be in opposite pairs on the stem. They may be similar in shape and colour to adult leaves, or very different, such as round, glaucous (a white powdery coating) or having a wavy edge. Juvenile leaves can be an important clue to identifying the species. You can sometimes find them growing on the trunk of the tree as epicormic growth say after a fire or other stress like insect attack. Or they may be sprouting from an injury on the tree where a limb may have fallen. Look for any seedlings near the tree that may show you the juvenile foliage.

Intermediate foliage is not always apparent and are generally not as important for identification purposes. They can sometimes be seen on saplings as the young tree matures into adult foliage. They are often longer and broader than the adult leaf.

Adult leaves are produced as the plant grows and are usually present by the time the young tree is 3 or 4 metres tall. This however can vary from species to species. Adult leaves are usually alternate along the stem. Some trees retain their juvenile leaves into maturity eg Euc. cinerea or Argyle Apple. They stay round and glaucous which can be very distinctive and attractive. They will also sometimes produce some longer and narrower intermediate leaves at the ends of their branches.

When you are wanting to identify a tree, it is good to take a sample of whatever leaf types you can find so you can look at them closely when you get home and compare them to species descriptions.

Identifying characteristics of the leaf are:

Size and shape of the leaf

Colour of the leaf. Top and underside. Glaucous?
The pattern of leaf venation. For example, a marked characteristic of Eucalyptus pauciflora (Snow Gum) and Eucalyptus stellulata (Black Sallee ) is their parallel venation. ie the side veins run more or less parallel to the mid rib.
How far the marginal vein is from the edge of the leaf.
The pattern of the oil glands.
The edges of the leaf. They may be wavy or crenulated eg Euc. crenulata ( Silver Gum)

4. Buds

Flower buds are not always present but are important for identifying Eucalypts. Collect a sample if possible.

Identifying characteristics of the buds are:

Size and shape. The little cap that falls off as the flower opens is called the operculum and they can differ markedly from species to species.
Length and shape of pedicels – ie the little stalk of the flower bud.
Number of buds in each cluster eg. Single, in 3’s, 7’s or more than 7. Be observant of some clusters that may have lost some buds. You can usually see a little scar where they were once attached.

5. Fruit

Eucalypts have woody capsules that when mature or removed from the tree and dried out, open to release the small seeds and a chaff. Collect a sample even if you need to look on the ground around the base of the tree for old fallen ones.

Identifying characteristics of the fruit are:

Size and shape
Number and position of valves. When the valves open to release the seed, they can be sunken, level or exerted from the top of the capsule.
The disc or top outer edge of the capsule may be level, ascending or descending.

Acacias

The Genus of Acacias are especially easy to identify when they are flowering. We are all familiar with the ubiquitous yellow fluffy flowers of the wattle. Many flower in spring but there are also species that flower in other times of the year. Acacias have a wide variety of leaf shape and can vary in size from a small shrub to a tree.

To identify a particular species, you need to observe the following characteristics and collect a sample of leaves, flowers, pods and seeds if possible.

1. Size and growth habit. They can vary from a shrub to a tree.

2. Where it occurs in the landscape eg drainage line, ridge top.

3. Leaves

All Acacias germinate with pinnate seedling leaves ie feathery. Some species develop to maturity bearing only bipinnate or feathery leaves. Many however, develop phyllodes which are formed by a flattening of the leaf stem and look like a simple leaf. These can vary in shape from your common lanceolate shape to triangular, to narrow and needle like. So, whether the leaves are bipinnate or a phylode is an important initial identifying characteristic. There can also be glands on the leaf stem that will help with identification.

4. Flowers

Shape. Are the flowers in round, globular heads or in longer spikes?
Colour. The colour of the flowers can vary from a very bright yellow to a mid-yellow to a very pale yellow.
Flowering time. Wattles usually have a distinct flowering time, but this can vary for a widespread species from district to district. So, it is good to observe the flowering times of your local plants. You can easily distinguish between the 4 local species of what can commonly be called a Black Wattle on casual observation, by the colour of it’s flowers and month of flowering.

Acacia decurrens ( Black Wattle or Green Wattle) has bright yellow flowers in September.

Acacia trachyphloia (Golden Feather Wattle) has mid yellow flowers in September/October.

Acacia mearnsii ( Black Wattle) has very pale yellow flowers in November.

Acacia parramattensis ( Sydney Green Wattle) has mid yellow flowers in January.

5. Seed Pods and Seeds

The shape and size of pods and seeds are an important identifying characteristic of Acacias. The stalk of the seed that attaches it inside the pod is called the funicle and it varies from short to long.

Identification of other common local species

Again to identify a plant you need to :

Observe

Growth habit
Where in the landscape it is growing
bark

Collect samples of

Leaves
Flowers
Seed capsules

SEED COLLECTION

1. Permission

Where seed is collected from land belonging to another land owner, whether private or public, approval must be obtained. Licences are required from the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage when collecting seed from threatened or protected species.

2. Collect locally

For regeneration projects it is best to plant species that occur locally. They are adapted to the local climate and soil types.

This is especially important for some species that have a very wide distribution. For example the Blackwood, Acacia melanoxylon, occurs all the way up the eastern seaboard of Australia from rainforest gullies in Tasmania to Queensland and South Australia. Especially important for species like this one is seed provenance. Provenance describes where the seed was collected. It makes sense to use local provenance seed to increase the success of plantings. In the Nursery we grew 3 provenances of A. melanoxylon. The seedlings grown from trees growing in the wet, sheltered gullies in the foothills of the Budawangs did not survive the harsh conditions of the exposed sites on the Braidwood granites. Whereas the seed collected from the tough little Blackwoods growing on the poorer soils and more exposed conditions around Braidwood produced hardy seedlings that thrived.

Some species are especially adaptable whereas others despite growing locally are fussy about where they grow. The Eucalyptus melliodora (Yellow Box) is one of these. Even though it occurs naturally in some areas of this district eg parts of Bombay and Manar, it will rarely thrive in areas in which it does not normally occur.

There are also some native species that despite not occurring naturally in this district do very well here and are hardy, adaptable plants. For example, Eucalyptus nicholli (Willow Leaf Peppermint) comes from the Northern Tablelands, Eucalyptus macarthuri (Paddy’s River Box), Acacia floribunda (Gossamer Wattle) and Acacia pravissima (Ovens Wattle) do well but do not occur naturally around Braidwood. These species can be used and are often popular for growing in windbreaks, as street trees or in gardens. They should not however be used in regeneration projects where the aim is to try and re-establish plants native to the district, or in areas adjacent to bushland where they may start to self -seed.

3. Collect from large healthy populations

Collect from as many healthy specimens of a particular species growing in the immediate area as possible. Never collect seed from a single remnant tree. Seed from isolated populations can be inbred and lead to plants with low vigour and poor resistance to disease. Collect seed from different parent trees of the same species scattered throughout the source patch rather than from adjacent plants. This will ensure good genetic diversity.

Only collect healthy, clean pods or capsules. Avoid evidence of insect infestation and damage.

Don’t take all the seed from any individual plant. Leave some for the plant itself and the animals, birds and insects that feed on it. Take care not to damage the parent tree unnecessarily.

4. Timing

Timing is all about making sure the seed is ripe and mature or getting it before it is shed or eaten by birds or insects. For small projects you can be opportunistic when collecting seed. Be observant of trees with seed on them and trees that are flowering to revisit later. Seed capsules may only be present on one side of the tree so walk all around it looking. Check for the maturity of the seed capsules. Older is usually better. Eucalypts and other species that hold their seed in woody capsules eg. Leptospermums, Melaleucas, Callistemons, Casuarinas and Hakeas, can be collected at any time. Avoid green capsules. The more mature capsules will be brown and further down the stem.

The seed of some cold country or alpine species need to go through a cold stratification period to fully mature. eg Eucalyptus pauciflora (Snow Gum). Some people put it in the fridge for a few weeks to cold stratify it but if you collect capsules old enough to have been through a winter the frosts can do that job.

Acacia seed should be collected just as the pods dry and split open to get good mature seed. This often happens between Xmas and New Year in the Braidwood district but can be a bit earlier in a hot year. Sometimes it is eaten by birds (especially the Gang Gangs and other parrots) whilst pods and seed are still green. The Blackwood (Acacia melanoxylon), hangs on to its seed a little longer and can be collected in January.

Other species shed their seed suddenly and surreptitiously (eg. Daviesia, other peas and Grevilleas). Small quantities can be harvested if you tie a paper bag or a gauze bag over the ripening seed pods for the last few weeks of maturing. The seed then sheds into the bag.

Banksia seed

The two most common local species of Banksia are Banksia marginata (Silver Banksia) and Banksia spinulosa (Hair Pin Banksia). The Silver Banksia which grows into a small tree opens its cones and sheds its seeds each year in January, so ripe seed can be collected then. However, be quick or the Yellow Tail Black Cockatoos may beat you to it. You can get enough seed for small projects by picking up the cones they drop under the tree that still have seed in them.

Banksia spinulosa’s cones need to be placed in a low heat oven (120 degrees C ) for an hour or two to get them to open.

5. Methods of seed collection

Plenty of seed can be collected just using secateurs and a long handled extendable set of pruners. Sometimes you can take advantage of freshly fallen limbs or branches. Standing in the back of a ute can give you a little extra height. Acacia pods can be stripped into a bucket, as can small quantities of grass seed.

The small branches holding the seed capsules should be placed in a well ventilated, warm place until they have opened and shed. They can be placed on a tarp, or into a plastic tub or bucket. Just a bowl or paper bag inside on a window sill can be used for smaller quantities. Once they have opened and shed, the seed can be sieved out from the capsules or separated from the pods. Make sure you label each container with name…Genus and species, where collected and the date.

6. Storage

Seed should be stored in glass jars in a cool, dry and dark place eg. A cupboard or drawer. They need to be rodent and insect proof. A little sachet of desiccant (like in a pill bottle) is a good idea to place in the jar with the seed to absorb any moisture. Make sure the jar is clearly labelled with species name, place collected and date. If stored well, most seed should be viable for some years. Some species have low germination rates unless fresh seed was collected each year. Eg Bursaria spinosa (Blackthorn) and Prostanthera lasianthos (Victorian Xmas Bush).

Acacia rubida seed ready to collect

Eucalytus polyanthemous gumnuts