SEEDS FOR HIPPO

Recently I suggested to my friend Tom from A Hippo on the Lawn blog that a couple of the lovely flowering trees we have in Brisbane would be a nice addition to his resort in the making.

I suggested these:

 

A Poinciana Tree

 

and a Jacaranda Tree.

 

 

Neither of these trees are native to Australia but both play a big part in beautifying the suburban landscape of Brisbane.

 

Tom was very receptive to the idea so I set out to collect some seeds to send off to him in Angola.

 

Both trees produce huge numbers of seeds so Tony collected some Ponciana seeds for me as he worked around the neighbourhood.

 

 

This is one of the large seed pods.

 

Inside each little channel holds a single large seed.

 

I selected 5 or 6 of the seeds ( he didn't want many !!) from one pod and posted them off to Tom via his brother in Germany.( there's plenty more where they came from Tom if you need them !!)

 

Then to test them out I stuck a few into a spare pot to see if and how long it would take for them to germinate.

 

Two weeks later I remembered them and looked into the pot to find this !

 

This one had popped itself right out of the ground !

 





 

 

 

Looks like they'll be easy to grow Tom !

Hope they manage to reach Angola soon.

 

 

I'm off to collect Jacaranda seeds now.

 

Cheers.

RED

Spring has come and gone and we are now plunged into full Summer weather.

Luckily, as yet, we have not had much of the humidity that makes our Summers so hard to cope with.

The lack of any rain at all through August to November meant that our Spring was a pretty colourless affair with the almost complete absence of annual flowers in dry suburban gardens.

Thankfully we have our lovely tropical trees to add colour to our city.

The lovely purple Jacarandas have now a disappeared from the streets of Brisbane to be replaced with a blaze of vibrant red in the form of the Poinciana trees.



These large trees need a large garden to grow in

and are found in gardens and street plantings all over Brisbane especially in older suburbs where the trees can be very big. 

They have an umbrella shaped canopy providing beautiful shady areas in a large garden.

You may remember I wrote about them  here .

~ ~ ~ ~

Yesterday Tony came upon this cute fellow.



It's a mail box made out of old gas bottles !



People are clever aren't they?

Collecting the mail would be fun every day.
I'd never be able to resist having a chat with him as I checked his tummy for any post.

 

Bet the Postie likes him too !!

 

Cheers.