Cape Chestnut

Winter has gone – Drouin’s Cape Chestnuts are telling us so.

The Cape Chestnut, Calodendrum capense, (the South African National BiodiversityInstitute), is not related to the chestnut tree family but is in fact a member of the citrus family and the name says it all - ‘Calodendrum’ is Greek for ‘beautiful tree’.

Click on images for a larger view

In its countries of origin, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Zimbabwe and South Africa, the hard wood is sometimes used for furniture making, flooring and tool handles.

The Cape Chestnut is a well shaped, single-trunked tree with beautiful pink/white flowers covering the canopy making it a popular ornamental street tree. The root system is not especially invasive and the tree is capable of withstanding severe pruning it seems. The Cape Chestnut is a great shade tree for combating the urban heat island effect, (a previous blog post – The Urban Heat Island Effect).

The leaves contain numerous oil glands and when crushed they give off a lemony-pine scent. In parts of South Africa today, the oil is still extracted and used as an ingredient for several natural ointments, medications and cosmetics.

The pink flowers of Drouin’s Cape Chestnuts at present combine and contrast beautifully with the mauve/blue of the many Jacarandas in flower at the moment, providing a visual feast for the eye.

The existence of Drouin’s Cape Chestnuts is due entirely to Roy Everard Ross, the Buln Buln Shire Engineer and Building Surveyor from 1925 to 1946, (an earlier blog post about Roy Everard Ross – TheEngineer Who Loved Trees).

Princes Way near the library and Hearn St are perhaps the best places to see some examples of this beautiful street tree.

By all accounts, the Cape Chestnut is easily grown from seed and once struck is easy to transplant – now there’s an idea!

Paperbarks

Drouin appears to have two principal species of street Paperbarks, the Prickly-leafed Paperbark, (Melaleuca stypheloides) and the Flax-leafed Paperbark, (M. linarifolia).

M. linarifolia Lardner Rd

M. stypheloides Lardner Rd

There are a couple of hundred species of Melaleucas and nearly all of them are endemic to Australia. The Swamp Paperbark, M. ericoides, is the ‘wild’ species that can be seen in the wet gullies of the foothills throughout West Gippsland. Melaleucas are close relatives to the Callistemons or Bottlebrushes.

‘Melaleuca’ means black and white, referring to the appearance of the trunk at certain times, (or maybe the first settlers saw the blackened lower half of the trunks after fire?). Melaleucas are tolerant of dry and wet conditions but generally enjoy some periodic inundation of their roots. They are good species for wet areas but their roots are renowned for entering sewerage lines and drains.

Church St

Paperbarks make good street trees for their ability to tolerate pruning and if there is sufficient moisture in the soil, they can be deep-rooted, allowing grass to grow right up to their trunks.

Tolerant!

At the moment, Drouin’s M. linarifolia are in flower but the M. stypheloides are yet to flower fully. Understandably, one common name for the Flax-leafed Paperbark is ‘Snow in Summer’. Paperbark flowers are high in nectar content and attract many species of insects and birds. The dense foliage provides good roosting habitat for birds and many ‘remote’ Paperbarks will often contain bird and possum nests.

M. linarifolia

M. stypheloides not quite out yet

Of course, Paperbarks are named for their obvious bark which can often provide cover for various insects, spiders and reptiles.

 

M. linarifolia

M. stypheloides

There are many ‘versions’ of Paperbarks now propagated in nurseries and it is not difficult to select a variety to suit most gardens. “One man’s weed is another’s wildflower” – introduced Melaleucas have invaded huge areas of the Florida Wetlands!

Grey Butcherbird

Many birdwatchers and amateur naturalists have evocative bird sounds imprinted in their heads. Hear the call and images of places and times, often from long ago, are immediately recalled with the utmost clarity. The call of the Grey Butcherbird is one, (of several), that does this for me.

In the early morning in a past life, I would walk to work across a golf course and be serenaded by a chorus from the resident family of butcherbirds. One of the phrases of their calls was easy to mimic with a whistle and often we would conduct a duet with one another.

 

'Dueting' with me at my woodheap

A similar experience is beginning to occur in my backyard in Drouin. I have been able on several occasions recently, to ‘whistle-in’ a family of Grey Butcherbirds that have their territory staked in the large eucalypts in the nearby road reserve. I reward them with a small morsel of meat, (as in a bit of left over cat food generally – a strictly indoor moggy of course!).

Grey Butcherbirds are carnivorous birds with a diet consisting mostly of insects, small reptiles and other small birds and their nestlings, the latter being the reason behind the rather poor reputation of this fine Australian endemic bird. They are a predator species that engage in the perch-and-pounce technique of hunting and will sometimes suspend their prey in a forked branch before dismembering it, (hence ‘butcher’).

 

Grey Butcherbird at it's larder - a Rufous Fantail! (Thanks Jim for the pic)

Grey Butcherbirds, Cracticus torquatus (= ‘noisy’ & ‘collared’), are a widespread species that prefer open forest and woodland habitat. They have adapted well to human urbanization, living in our parks and gardens especially where large eucalypts are in the vicinity. They build a stick nest rather like a small version of their close relative the magpie.

A Drouin 'bakyard bird'.

A butcher at it's nest.

The call of the Grey Butcherbird is variously described with adjectives like rich, piping, mellow, bubbly, lilting and rollicking, (link – Graeme Chapman).

Welcome outside my window anytime.   

The Greenhouse Effect

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere

The level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has risen by as much as 40% since the Industrial Revolution.

The graph above shows the dramatic increase of CO2 in the atmosphere since 1960, as measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii.

CO2 in the atmosphere, along with other gases like methane, nitrous oxide and water vapour, acts as a greenhouse gas, trapping much of the sun’s reflected energy before it returns out to space. The effect is to increase the surface temperature of our planet – global warming. (Here’s a link to an excellent explanation of the greenhouse effect by the Department of the Environment and Energy).

Photosynthesis

Trees, (in fact all plants), absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and through photosynthesis convert it to nutrient, glucose, for the tree to grow. There are are numerous websites that explain photosynthesis in more or less detail. Put very simply;

carbon dioxide + water (+ sunlight) = glucose + oxygen.

Australia’s native forests, about 147 million hectares, hold in store (or sequester) about 10.5 billion tonnes of carbon which translates to about 38.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, (Australia’s Chief Scientist)

Saving the planet and looking beautiful

Every little bit counts

When we drive our cars or switch on the television, etc, we produce carbon. Every Australian person produces about 8 tonne of carbon a year. To offset that much carbon, each person would need to plant more than 20 eucalypts a year for many years. This means we should be doing as much as we possibly can to preserve our existing mature trees and for every one we lose, replacing it with at least 20 more young seedlings.

An Example

Before - probably holding 46 tonne of CO2

Not anymore

The giant Mountain Grey Gum at the southern end of Oddy St was cut down in August this year. The tree was strong and healthy, and measured 1.4m diam and 30m tall. Using forestry standard calculations for eucalypts, this tree was sequestering more than 45 tonnes of CO2.

Note

You can calculate your own greenhouse gas emission at the EPA Vic website.

The main sources of carbon dioxide detailed at What’s Your Impact.