Down At Ground Level

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Other Gwondanaland Plantings

I do not want to give you the impression I have the sole little piece of gwondanaland struggling to survive. A lot of direct descendants of the original Cretaceous forest still struggle on today out in wild. Some are ideally acclimatized for the harsh climates of southern Africa and Australia.  Others are tropical forest specialists. Some are being pampered in special collections, like these cycads in Adelaide's Botanical Gardens.

An interesting (re)discovery

Today I came across some old sketches of my original ideas for the cretaceous garden. The first was perhaps a little ambitious, with a water feature and mini pier from the carport. However on the back of this sketch was an interesting hand written list-

suitable plants with cretaceous ancestors

• ferns
• moss
• cycads
• laurel (eg sassafras)
• cypress (low growing)
• deciduous beech
• ginkgo
• bamboo ??

The fact that I had included bamboo suggest that I had not researched this list well, if at all. Grasses, of which bamboo is one, didn't really evolve until until after the cretaceous (but more about bamboo later) I suspect it is on the list because it was already there in the garden.

I also has a second list of look-alike cretaceous plants

• broad leaf cover (eg aspidistra)
• pin cushion plant
  

Looking back that was a pretty good list to start, and matches what has flourished, I'm giving myself 7 out of 10 for plant selection (now is that a B minus or a C plus on a standardized marking system?)



My second design is much closer to what I have created it has a dry creek bed of rocks instead of a pond. I left out the stepping stone and have a mini island instead.

You might like to see what the area looked like before it became cretaceous.

meet the cycads

Cycads (pronouces sigh-kads) are an order of plants that flourished during the Mesozoic Era. They have large pinnately compound leaves (fronds) that superficially resemble palms and some ferns. However these plants have a markedly different strategy for reproduction, since they developed before insects had evolved on land. They are dioecious, which means there are seperate male and female plant, and have cones rather than flowers.

Cycads are very common in the Australian fossil record They are generally very hardy plants and are still growing in many parts of the world. Most widely in South Africa, South America, the Pacific and Australia (as a relict of their Gwondanaland floral heritage). They are widely believed to have been a significant food source for dinosaurs. The seeds of many cycads are poisonous, containg BMMA, a neurotoxin which results from the cycad's roots close relationship with blue green algae that also helps these plants fixed nitrogen into the soil. In the pioneering days of european settlement in Australia, cycads where "harvested" as a rich source of starch, not for eating but as a laundring aid.

I have several sago palms, cycas revoluta, a japanese variety, which is probably the most popular cycad for cultivation. They where starting to look very unhealthy in the heat, the frond turning yellow and dropping down. Then just as I was worrying, two of the larger plants sent up new fronds. I am not sure if it was the heat, or the smoke hazy that triggered this change, I remember hearing that cycads are a type of plant that flourish after a fire

more yellow spots

Just noticed more yellow spotting, this time on a small cycad, is this a sign of drought stress, air pollution or another problem from the hail at christmas. For now I'll assume it is hail damage and the plant will recover.