Any Australian can load their photos of native plants and animals on iNaturalist and ask for sightings to be identified by experts.
Category: Fungi
Biodispersal: Another word for the dictionary
A student at Dekin Uni is writing about GM foods. She wanted my opinion, so here is my reply – it was published eight years ago in response to an opinion piece written by Jennifer Marohasy (a member of the Institute of Public Affairs, a pro-industry lobby group) in the Courier Mail…
Paronella Park: Queensland’s Juicy Jungle Garden
Paronella Park, near Innisfail, is the legacy created by Jose Paronella, a prodigiously productive person. Born in Catalonia, Spain, and trained as a pastry chef, Jose emigrated to Australia in 1913. He started as a sugarcane-cutter, then worked at improving sugarcane farms before investing his savings and energy into creating Parronella.
Looking Back: Autumn Open Day at Bellis
An Open Day is a great way to get feedback from gardeners on what you’re growing and how you’re doing.
In Production Today – May
Warm, humid, sunny conditions have allowed most crops to grow well.
In Production Today – October
In Brisbane, winter crops have finished flowering. Their seed is ripe and ready for harvest.
In Production Today: September 2012
Spring is warm and dry, so the diversity of temperate crops in this 300 sq metre garden has dropped to 156.
Book Review: Australia’s Poisonous Plants by Dr Ross McKenzie
If you put raw silverbeet in your salad, or casually add nitrogen to your vegetables, this book is a must read. If it doesn’t save your life, it will certainly improve it.
In Flower Today
Brisbane‘s subtropical winter comes to a happy, floriferous end in mid-August. Today there’s around a hundred different plants flowering, two weeks before Australia’s official first day of spring.
In Production Today – June 2012
There’s just 112 different types of edible available right now, less than in late winter, since many crops sown are still juvenile. Winter in Brisbane is perfect for mushroom growing on the cheap. In cool conditions, mushroom fly (Lycoriella sp.) ceases egg laying, so its maggots don’t riddle mushrooms with holes.
Botanical Stamps
A selection collected by my parents, grandfather and me. One way for a child to learn about plants and places…and a bit of botanical latin too. There’s just one from my grandfather’s collection: Cattleya skinneri, an orchid. Stamps of his era hadn’t tapped into the profitable collectors’ market. There are more from my father’s collection…
Jerry Coleby-Williams 