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. 

 

YES, IT'S THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN!

Yes, it's that time of year again.



The time when the beautiful Jacarandas all over Brisbane

burst into glorious purple bloom.

 

The ones above are on a golf club where they are able to water the fairways from the large dams they have put in for that purpose.

The rest are doing their best to make up for the lack of green grass as we haven't had a drop of rain since July.

 

Beautiful aren't they?

Cheers. 

LOVE THOSE GUM TREES

 

I've mentioned in the past that  I have a particular fondness for trees.

In fact I've written posts about them here and here and here TOO.

 

 

I thought it was time  Australia's "gum" trees featured in a post of their own.

 

 

There are many different types of gum tree and I am not at all familiar with their individual names.
.

Oh, I can recognise an Iron Bark

 

 

and a Stringy Bark

 

 

and even a Squiggly Gum

 

 

by studying their bark but that's about as scientific as I get.

 

 

On the whole they are tall, spindly trees, sparsely leaved with a distinctive shape and dark, grey-green long thin leaves and they grow everywhere very abundantly.

 *

and where they grow is called "the bush".

 

Sometimes the bush is quite sparse as in the photo above

and sometimes it is thick with trees and undergrowth like this

 

 

 

 - tall, mature trees and spindly saplings crowding together.

 

 *

 

Sometimes you see trees growing all alone

*
like this HUGE one,

 left to stand when the bush was cleared for development because of its particular beauty and size,

*
or planted by home owners who enjoy their dappled shade.

*

There are a few spectacular ones in my neighbourhood like these


*
but despite their beauty they are not good trees to have in your garden.
They drop lots of leaves all over the lawn.
They shed huge quantities of bark.

Constantly!

They are not trees that are designed to stand alone without the protection of other trees

and in storms, when the wind blows strongly they drop huge branches or often the whole tree will snap and they are responsible for the huge damage bills we have after storms

 

Never-the-less we love them.

 

They smell of eucalyptus.

 

They're icons of Australia.

 

and we teach our school children to sing about them !!!

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CACPeNkcFE

* These are my photos. Any others have been taken from the Internet.

** A big thank you my bloggy friends for all your kind words and wishes. What would I do without you ??

I'm linking with Shay's Favourite Things Friday as trees are one of my absolute favourite things EVER !

Cheers.