#15 Tongues in Trees
Spix's Macaw, Cairns Birdwing Butterfly Vine, Catching and Storing water, Striking Cuttings, Neil Gaiman's "Art Matters"
Welcome to the Fifteenth Tongues in Trees!
I hope that you’re enjoying the newsletter and my choices of topics and plants.
Don’t forget that you can make requests by commenting on this post or emailing janegrowsgardenrooms@gmail.com!
In this week’s newsletter:
The Spix’s Macaw is back in the wild after 20 years.
Plant Profile: Cairns Birdwing Butterfly Vine
Permaculture: Catching and storing water with living mulch
Moments of Wonder: Striking Cuttings
This Week in Books: Neil Gaiman’s Art Matters
I’ve decided to delay the “free reading link” this week as I want to share a new way of propagating cuttings and the story isn’t finished yet. I will send it out in the next few days.
Spix’s Macaws Reintroduced after Twenty Years of being Extinct in the Wild
On June 11th, eight Spix’s Macaws were released into the wild, accompanied by wild Illiger’s Macaws in the hope that the wild parrots will help the captive-bred birds survive in the wild.
The project has been the subject of significant controversy and infighting, but finally, a big step is being taken in an effort to restore the species’ place in their own threatened habitat of dry rainforest.
This tropical dry rainforest known as the caatinga covers approximately 10% of Brazil and is lush and green during the wet season but fades to shades of grey and white for the other 9 months of the year.
The Spix’s Macaws were last seen in the caatinga in October 2000. Historical accounts suggest that it was never an abundant species and when the beautiful blue birds were “discovered” by the Western world it became a trophy for bird collectors. As the caatinga was reduced by human activity, the Spix’s population became threatened by habitat loss and poachers.
All the birds in the reintroduction project have been bred from birds in captivity, which was a complicated process in its own right. Spix’s Macaws are monogamous and don’t pair easily. The project pioneered methods in artificial insemination to ensure genetic diversity.
This was a fascinating project to read about. It’s a story of determination more than anything and hopefully, that determination will be rewarded with a new population of these beautiful birds that inspired the children’s movie, Rio.
Read more here.
Cairns Birdwing Butterfly Vine or Aristolochia acuminata
I am planting out a butterfly room in my new garden and this species is a “must-have” in my area. It is the host plant for birdwing, glasswing and some species of swallowtail. The butterfly I am most excited about attracting is the magnificent Cairns Birdwing (Triodes euphorion), Australia’s largest butterfly. It is the green and yellow winged beauty in the graphic. I also love the Glasswings (Cressida cressida) pictured in the graphic, but in this photo from my old garden, you can’t see the transparent panels in its wings that give it its name.
This vine, known as Native Dutchman’s Pipe, is toxic and as the caterpillars eat they become toxic to all their predators except for the Golden Orb Spider. Unfortunately, the exotic species (Aristolochia elegans) has also been introduced into the area and it is so toxic that it kills the caterpillars too.
Native Dutchman’s Pipe prefers a sunny position with opportunity to grow up to twenty metres in length over trellises, fences or vegetation. It likes well-drained humus-rich soil in tropical and subtropical climate zones but is also found in warm temperate zones.
The small pipe-shaped flowers trap insects to ensure pollination, but they are eventually released.
The powdered roots have been used medicinally across its range in Southeast Asia to treat fever and digestive disorders.
As with many native plants, this vine is becoming rarer due to habitat loss so it is an important act of conservation to plant it in gardens and rehabilitation projects to ensure the survival of not only the vine but also the butterflies that it hosts.
Catching and Storing Water with Living Mulch
There are many ways to capture and store water in your garden. Before I started my permaculture course, water storage was always about tanks and containers. Now I think about other less obvious storage that works with my garden.
Water can be caught and stored in soil by using structures such as contour banks or swales to slow runoff until it absorbs into banks.
This works for large gardens, but not necessarily smaller spaces. Any space can store water in plants. In fact, if you have enough plants in a space, they will create a microclimate. This microclimate can help conserve water and support plant health even in drought conditions.
One method that I am trying to use more often to catch and store water is using living mulches. By using shallow-rooted groundcovers to stop the soil from drying out and forming another layer in the garden, I am creating habitat and contributing to a microclimate to support the larger plants in the system.
So, whether you have a small balcony garden or a large expanse on acreage, try to find groundcovers that will cover the soil and help add to your garden. In the graphic above, you can see one of my favourites, Native Violet (Viola banksia) which not only covers the soil but also provides leaves and flowers for salads. It’s a great addition to my garden and even if it gets so dry that the upper parts of the plant die, the rootstock survives to reshoot when the moisture returns.
Living mulches work in potted plants as well as in the garden and are a great way to make sure you’re storing water with efficiency!
The Joys of New Life
When organising to move house, one of my greatest concerns was leaving my plants that were in the ground. All the potted plants went with me or were given to friends and family. In addition to the more than eighty plants that travelled more than 1000 kilometres to their new home, there were a number of cuttings that I was trying to strike from those plants that couldn’t be moved.
After being unsuccessful with some of the more delicate species over and over again, I tried a new propagation technique (to be elaborated with a free reading link in the coming days!) and last week I decided it was time to check on them. Holding my breath I began to look for roots. I didn’t have to look far for the roots of the Coleus cuttings, but that’s no surprise as they strike readily. Then I saw another bunch of thick healthy roots… the Bolwarra or Native Guava had burst out of the propagation mix! Hurrah! The Lemon Myrtle that I had failed to propagate dozens of times was showing slight thin little threads that I carefully didn’t touch. The Native Mulberries that I think of as a “biodiversity hub plant” were also pushing thin white threads through the propagation mix!
Isn’t it amazing that plants can clone themselves like this! I find it truly wondrous and as a gardener, it’s one of the most pleasurable tasks to clone a plant one loves to improve the chances of its genes surviving!
Art Matters by Neil Gaiman
“Individuals make the future and they do it by imagining that things can be different.”
This book is actually a collection of speeches made by Neil Gaiman. It is fitting then, that I listened to it as an audiobook, but ironic, considering its message about reading that dominates the second and longest chapter.
The messages are all matters close to my heart: the importance of reading and libraries, the importance of taking risks in the arts and finally, the ability of the individual to create change.
That last one links to the heart of Tongues in Trees. We can imagine a different world, a sustainable world, a world where nature is a priority for society, a world that has a healthy and wonder-filled future.