Monday, April 06, 2009

Seeds for the future

It is that time of the year again - for some weeks Cottesloe Coastcarers have been collecting seeds of their local plants for future projects. Last Sunday, on our first regular working day, we had some welcome helpersAmanda, Lucy and Elena from Iona Presentation College spent a beautiful Sunday morning helping us to collect the somewhat elusive seeds of our coastal Scaevola crassifolia:
The light blue, sweetly scented fan-flower of this coastal species with its dark-green, fleshy leaves has been blooming profusely this year.

On the left CCA member Jan explains to Elena that the name of the plant means 'left-handed' because the petals of the flowers are arranged like the fingers of a left hand.


We also collected seeds of the silvery coastal daisy (Olearia axillaris), the striking red berries of the Rhagodia baccata and heads of brown spikelets from our local knotted club-rush (Ficinia nodosa).

The seeds will now be dried, processed and propagated for our future plantings - maybe our lovely helpers will be with us again in time to come when we plant the seedlings that have resulted from this Sunday's collections.

(Photos by Sue Freeth)