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Banksia Bulletinwinter 2021 Murnong movement Finding mushrooms Ecological burnsFrom the Mayor Hello, and welcome to the Winter edition of Banksia Bulletin. This edition, we find ourselves acknowledging yet another lockdown across Melbourne as our state continues to work hard to stop the spread of COVID-19 and make sacrifices that aim to keep ourselves, our families and our community healthy. I must say that lockdown for myself and my wife, Jenny, has not been as tough as it has for many others living in our community. After all, we no longer have young children at home to school which I know for many is difficult, particularly for those working alongside them while they learn. Our thoughts go out to those individuals who have been affected in harsher ways, and of course our local businesses who, once again, were disrupted by this ongoing pandemic. I hope you have been finding ways to connect with nature and with loved ones where you can. It is most certainly a much slower lifestyle in lockdown. My mornings have generally comprised of checking Council emails and speaking with friends via my personal email while sipping on a cup of tea and enjoying a couple of Jenny’s homemade biscuits (delicious, by the way). Our two hours of daily exercise during the circuit breaker lockdown are usually enjoyed by walking to Edward Street beach and heading off in a northerly direction to Sandringham, or, sometimes we’ll head south to Half Moon Bay. We are so lucky to have many great walks along the tracks of our wonderful foreshore greenery, taking time to admire the flora, and if we’re lucky, spot a bird, a frog or other wildlife we have in abundance. Although, it is getting cold, so these sightings are getter fewer and farther between. The other walk we really like is up to the Cheltenham Golf Course and Cheltenham Park – another great green space where we see a lot of people enjoying their time outdoors – all physically distancing in the manner to which we’ve become accustomed. It has also been nice to take time out to read. I would like to thank Cr Fiona Stitfold for an excellent recommendation recently, Women and Leadership, by former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Nigerian- American economist and friend of Ms Gillard’s, Ms Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. There may be a subtle message there but there is certainly something in this book for everyone. I would like to again acknowledge the work our volunteers do and welcome you back to caring for our natural environment in a way that you know best. It is great to see working bees recommence in a COVID-safe way. Stay safe and healthy, Cr Laurence Evans OAM Mayor This female Australian Wingless Soldier Fly was found by a volunteer at the Bayside Community Nursery, impaled on a Xanthorrhoea minor leaf. Larvae of the soldier fly is beneficial, preventing house flies and blowflies from laying eggs in the material inhabited by the soldier larvae.Yam Daisy by Pauline Reynolds. In this issue Special features 6 THE MAGICAL DANCE OF THE MURNONG 8 WILD MUSHROOMING: A GUIDE FOR FORAGERS 14 RICKETTS POINT LANDSIDE: WORKING BEE UPDATE Other articles PLANTS OF BAYSIDE 4 BIN COLLECTION CHANGES 4 HAPPY 90TH BIRTHDAY JOAN COUZOFF 5 BAYSIDE BURNS BRING NEW LIFE TO PRECIOUS BUSHLAND RESERVES 16 PESTS IMPACT OUR ENVIRONMENT 20 IN MY GARDEN 21 VOLUNTEER GROUPS 22Coast Tea-tree (Leptospermum laevigatum) Plants of Bayside Words and photo by Aaron Hurrell, Citywide Bushland Crew Coast Tea-tree (Leptospermum laevigatum) The Coast Tea-tree (Leptospermum laevigatum) is a tall shrub/small tree that is found along the coast. It is an adaptable shrub that can be pruned and used as a hedge or a screening plant that’s very attractive when in full flower. Coast Tea-tree is found in well-drained sandy soil that, once established, can handle dryness with full sun to semi-shade. Growing between 2-8 metres tall and 2-4 metres wide, it has thick, flat, grey/green leaves that span up to 3cm long and 10mm wide. The Coast Tea-tree seedpods are 6-8mm wide, and white flowers usually appear between August and November reaching 20mm in width. Natural occurring hybrids between Coast Tea-tree and Silky Tea-tree have been found in Beaumaris. Coast Tea-trees are available for purchase at the Bayside Community Nursery. Note: This plant can become a pest if introduced in areas outside of its normal range. Source: Bull, Marilyn (1991) Flora of Melbourne: A guide to the indigenous plants of the greater Melbourne area Carlton Vic: Hyland House Publishing have your say Bin collection changes From July 2022, Bayside City Council plans to change the frequency of bin collections by picking up: • food and green waste bins with the light green lids weekly • general waste bins with the dark green lids fortnightly Consultation is now open for you to provide feedback on how Council can support you with this change. The plan to switch the bin collection schedule aims to reduce waste impacts on the environment while avoiding smelly bins and increased landfill costs. There are no other changes to waste services – recycling and hard waste collections and the day your bins are emptied will remain the same. Food will still be collected weekly, just in your food and green waste bin. This might feel like a big change for some households, and there are special circumstances that need to be considered such as households with large volumes of nappies or medical waste. Please visit Council’s Have Your Say page and complete the survey to provide feedback. 4Joan Couzoff designed the Bayside Environment Friend Network Inc and Friends of Balcombe Park Reserve logos. Happy 90th Birthday Joan Couzoff inaugural convenor Friends of Balcombe Park Reserve By Pauline Reynolds After Joan retired from full-time work in 1987, she was able to devote time to helping care for Balcombe Park Heathland which, after all, is almost her backyard. She had enjoyed and valued the reserve since building her house in the middle of the last century. Around 1990, a wildfire resulted in the totally unexpected regeneration of the wonderful area of Wedding Bush (Ricinocarpos pinifolius), which was considered to be almost extinct in Bayside’s heathlands. The emerging heathland, combined with the need to be more carefully managed, brought about the formation of the Friends of Balcombe Park, and Joan became the convenor. Joan handed over the convenor role about five years ago but remains an active member of the Friends group. She talks about the subtle perfume of the Wedding Bush when it’s in full flower and how the beautiful Love Creeper (Comesperma volubile) winds its purple flowers among the white blooms but also of the hands-and-knees jobs of weeding and cutting bracken after the subsequent ecological burns! These jobs are familiar to all of us. We all appreciate Joan’s work and care of the heathland, involvement in Bayside Environmental Friends Network Inc and her beautiful drawings and designs over the years. We also look forward to seeing her cutting bracken and sharing her experience and knowledge for many more years to come. Banksia Bulletin | Winter 20215Murnong, also known as Yam Daisy. Photo by Pauline Reynolds. The magical dance of the Murnong Story by Rob Saunders and Pauline Reynolds Rare Plants Group A few years ago, a good friend gave me some seeds and suggested I plant them in a terracotta pot. Banksia Bulletin | Winter 20216The seeds sprouted within a week, sending up long thin leaves with widely separated teeth along their edges. After a couple of months, flower buds appeared in the centre of each plant’s basal rosette. Each flower stalk had a firm base and grew straight upwards. But at the top, the stems were more pliable and curled down like neck of a swan. So, as it grew, each bud pointed towards the ground. For several mornings, I watched a magical dance unfold. Over a few hours, a flower stalk would straighten and its bud would point skywards to open a bright yellow flowerhead. At nightfall, each flower would close, dipping to the ground once more. This dance was repeated for each bud – pointing upwards, opening, closing and then bowing back down. Just as I thought the dance was over, a closed flower pointed back to the sky and re-opened as a ‘seed clock’ – a ball of seeds each with small tan hairs like a miniature umbrella for the wind to catch. That was my introduction to the Murnong, or Yam Daisy. For the original inhabitants of areas around what we now call Port Phillip, the edible tuberous roots of the Murnong may well have been an important staple food. In 1841, the Chief Aboriginal Protector of the Port Phillip District, George Augustus Robinson, recorded: “[T]he native women were spread out over the plain as far as the eye could see, collecting Murnong, or in this language pannin, a privilege they would not be permitted except under my protection. I inspected their bags and baskets on return and each had a load as much as she could carry.” (Quoted by Bruce Pascoe in ‘Dark Emu’, 2014, p 19). As author Bruce Pascoe explains in his book, Dark Emu, the broad acres of Murnong described in records like this were almost certainly the result of Aboriginal cultural burning practices, or ‘fire-stick farming’. They all but disappeared as sheep grazing, settlement and changed fire regimes dramatically altered the landscape. Pascoe mentions small remnant fields near Port Campbell in Victoria and Delegate in NSW, but Murnong has been locally extinct in Bayside for many decades. There has been some confusion over the botanical status of Murnong. While many sources refer to it as Microseris lanceolata, recent research by Neville Walsh from the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne distinguishes three separate species. A specimen collected from Brighton in 1896 and held in the University of Melbourne Herbarium is listed as Microseris scapigera, and it seems likely that was our local form. It has several tapering tuberous roots like thin fibrous parsnips, and a slightly bitter taste. Historical sources describing the tubers collected by Aboriginal people seem to suggest they favoured Microseris walteri, a more widespread but variable form with larger and more palatable tubers like small sweet potatoes. Pascoe mentions experiments by Aboriginal communities to cultivate Murnong again and speaks of plans to establish a market for this long-lost bush tucker. I’d quite like to try roast Murnong sometime but watching the dance of their flowers is enough for now. Any school teachers interested in growing Murnong seeds in class are welcome to contact Bayside Community Nursery. Small quantities of seed are available from time to time, but there are no plans at this stage to sell Murnong plants, as we have no natural sources of propagation material. Banksia Bulletin | Winter 20217Wild Mushrooming: A Guide for Foragers BOOK REVIEW Wild Mushrooming: A Guide for Foragers Romantic as it may sound, foraging for wild mushrooms is not for the faint-hearted. It is easy for new migrants to mistake Australian fungi for edible species from other countries, sometimes with dire consequences. By Sue Forster Australia has around 5,000 described species of larger fungi (those with reproductive structures or ‘sporophores’, such as typical mushroom-shaped fungi, but also jelly fungi, puffballs, pored fungi, shelf fungi, toothed fungi, disc and cup fungi, and coral fungi), and many more that are undescribed. We know little about most due to our lack of trained mycologists and loss of Indigenous knowledge. Mycologist and Principal Research Scientist at Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria Tom May and Alison Pouliot – photographer, ecologist and author – are both highly experienced writer- researchers who are well qualified to tackle the difficult subject of mushroom edibility in Australia. The last section of their beautifully illustrated, genre-defying book Wild Mushrooming: A Guide for Foragers (published by CSIRO) provides 29 luscious recipes guaranteed to pique our gastronomic interest. However, there is a lot to learn before we reach the kitchen. Beginning with the basics, the authors discuss taxonomy; the technical language used for describing fungi morphologies; how we can train our senses to identify smell, taste, colour, texture and form; and how we can make spore prints. They also describe how some fungi form nutrient- exchanging mycorrhizal relationships with specific living plants while others are parasitic or saprotrophic (gain nutrients from dead organic material Banksia Bulletin | Winter 20218Mycena clarkeana (toxic). Photo by Sue Forster.Next >