Friends of Tarra-Bulga National Park

Friends of Tarra-Bulga National Park

Website of the Friends Group – Information about working bees and monitoring projects. As well as flora and fauna pictures and descriptions

Category: Flora

Tree Guard Removal – Working Bees

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Friends of Tarra-Bulga have a couple of days coming up where we plan to remove wire mesh guards from successfully established trees, if we have enough volunteers we might even re-use the guards to plant some more.
Both sessions will target the area we are replanting after the 2009 fires. Parks Victoria have kindly re-cleared some access tracks to make the task a bit easier.
The first planned date is Saturday July 29th (was originally planned for the 22nd on our calendar) and the second date is Saturday, August 26th. Meeting point for both days is the visitors centre at 9.30am
If you are keen to lend a hand at either or both of these sessions please either register via email to friendsoftarrabulga@gmail.com or telephone 0488 035 314. There is also an exciting new option to register for our events via www.parkconnect.vic.gov.au
Successfully grown tree
A successfully grown Mountain Ash freshly liberated from its wire tree-guard.
Sycamore Maple Removal

First Working Bee for 2017

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Volunteer help is needed again on the first of our hands on work days for 2017. Environmental weeds are a menace and without extra help from passionate people they can quickly degrade precious habitats. On Saturday March 18th we will be continuing our ongoing efforts to keep Tutsan, Sycamore Maple, Blackberries and Ivy under control at a vulnerable site in the picturesque Tarra Valley.

No experience or prior knowledge necessary (help with weed id provided).

Meet at the Tarra Valley Picnic Area Car Park at 9.30am (finish at 12.30pm)

Tools provided (but you might like to bring along your own gloves.

For further details or to let us know you intend to come along contact us at friendsoftarrabulga@gmail.com or phone David on 0488 035 314.

 

Cyathea australis - Rough tree-fern
Cyathea australis – Rough tree-fern, the broken of scaly frond bases (Stipes) on the upper part of the trunk of these ferns are a quick aid to their identification.

 

Tarra-Bulga National Park on Bowerbird.org.au

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With the rise of information technology and social media there is now an assortment of worthy projects that volunteers or “citizen scientists” can join in with. One of the best in our estimation is www.bowerbird.org.au which is a wonderful tool for uploading any photos of flora or fauna that you may encounter. Not only can other users of Bowerbird assist you by using their knowledge to aid you with the identification of unfamiliar sightings you upload. Once fully identified to species level the sightings are then included as permanent records on the Atlas of Living Australia (ala.org.au) and which has an online searchable database with an amazing range of features, Bowerbird now has over forty thousand species records with peoples’ images from across Australia loaded onto the site and in its own right has virtually become a free online field guide.

Bowerbird users come from all over Australia with a strong representation from people in Gippsland so it is a great way of seeing what other local people are finding including a range of fascinating insects and fungi. There is the opportunity to create your own projects on Bowerbird and henceforth we have created a project for Tarra-Bulga National Park. To date we have around 320 sightings uploaded and identified with 5 different contributors. Morwell National Park also has a project which impressively has now over 1200 diverse records. So if you are a budding naturalist or just like looking at cool images of things like fungi, plants and insects check out http://www.bowerbird.org.au/projects/5665/sightings  and if you feel inclined please feel free to add your own.

Bowerbird Project
This is an screenshot of our Tarra-Bulga National Park Project Page on Bowerbird.org.au from earlier this year.

Tutsan under sustained attack

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A small crew turn out for yesterdays working bee with the aim being to continue work on tutsan at a site in the Tarra Valley that had been sprayed by contractors in March. Having been several months since we had viewed the site we ventured in with nervous anticipation. The possible scenario being anything from complete success with the spray having knocking each tutsan plant stone dead or the other alternative where the spraying was ineffective and the tutsan was thicker than ever.

After the climb up to the site the initial news was good with the remains of dark brown and dead tutsan clearly visible. We set to work in a methodical fashion and soon found plenty of living plants to deal with, mostly on the outer edges of the infestation, some that had been sprayed and not completely killed and others that had been missed. We found few (if any) newly germinated plants from seed, but there is bound to be a massive seed bank present which you can guarantee will get sprouting at some stage.

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As we walked further into the site, cutting and pasting living tutsan as we went, we found further evidence that tutsan that had been growing out in the open was completely dead and areas that had been thick with tutsan had now opened up. Pioneer species such as white elderberry (Sambucus gaudichaudiana) were popping up in the bare ground now exposed. The plants that were not out in the open are harder and intermingled with native species are harder to deal with and a number of large unsprayed patches further up the slope were discovered. They were too big for our small crew to tackle in one session and where mapped for us to tackle another day. One open slope area that had been sprayed had a fair proportion of plants still alive and reshooting, so a far bit of time was required to retreat them with poison. Although it was easy to lose count we treated at least 300 living tutsan plants in around 3 hours. We also worked on the odd bit of blackberry as well as approximately 20 sycamore maple which was the original weed we targeted on this site, we were originally pulling out maple seedlings by the hundreds. Overall the spraying made possible by a Communities For Nature Grant has been very successful but as anticipated we will need to do follow up work at this site over a number of years to promote the regeneration of native species and prevent the Tutsan coming back.

White elderberry (Sambucus gaudichaudiana) colonising bare ground once covered in tutsan.
Sycamore maple plant just prior to removal.

Working Bee (Tutsan and Sycamore Maple) – Saturday March 21st.

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 Our first group activity for the year will be held at a site in the park along Tarra Valley Rd that we have been working on for nearly a decade now. Initially we started tackling a serious infestation of Sycamore Maple, which is a tree that can be very invasive, it has light papery seeds that disperse in the wind, it can grow in shade and then potentially become a large tree. Over the years we have pulled out hundreds of new seedlings that have spread into the park and cut out and killed many larger saplings.

Photo of Tutsan
Tutsan with some fruit ready to spread more seed into the park.

We have now been successful at getting the Maple fairly well controlled and we have now also started on another weed (Tutsan) that is established at the site. Tutsan (Hypericum androsaemum) is a perennial shrub that grows to about 1.5m tall, it is related to St John’s Wort and is noted as being a serious threat to damp and wet schlerophyll forests. We have received a Communities for Nature grant to assist our efforts that will be used to fund contractors to spray the larger infestations as well as to purchase some hand tools and chemical to support our efforts.

We will be holding a working bee at the site on Saturday March the 21st. The meeting point will be at the Tarra Valley Car Park at 9.30am. Like many of our working bees’ the terrain will be steep and lots of scrambling through undergrowth will be required. Tools will be available but if you have your own favourite gloves or loppers please bring them along. Following the work we will have a free BBQ lunch provided down at the Fernholme Caravan Park (at around 1pm). If you are able to come along please call or email David Akers (0488 035 314) or friendsoftarrabulga@gmail.com preferably by March the 18th so we know how much food to buy.

Orange Pore Fungi - Favolaschia calocera

Alien Fungi

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Seems like not only plants and animals can be invasive. Yesterday, while walking along Forest Track, I spotted an unusual Fungi fruiting on a fallen log. It was a vivid orange colour and seemed to have an unusual pore arrangement on the underside. After snapping a few photos, I headed home to consult the field guides. Seeing nothing really to match, I uploaded the photo to http://www.Bowerbird.org.au  where a subscriber there quickly identified it as an exotic species, Favolaschia calocera otherwise known as Orange Pore Fungi.

Orange Pore Fungi - Favolaschia calocera, underside showing the pores.
Orange Pore Fungi – Favolaschia calocera

This Fungi apparently is a recent arrival to Australia the first record of it is from 2005. It was first observed in Madagascar and has recently spread to a number of countries across the globe. According to Wikipedia it colonises ruderal sites (Wastelands/Roadsides) where it can become the dominate species. Fingers crossed it does not become a dominate feature of our not so ruderal forests. Not sure how you can weed out or control a pest fungi.

Orange Pore Fungi - Favolaschia calocera
Orange Pore Fungi – Favolaschia calocera, View from the top showing the caps.

 

Silver Wattle Babies

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Interesting mass germination of Silver Wattle (Acacia dealbata) recently. The ground in some parts is covered in a carpet with literally thousands of them.

Before they can sprout Wattles usually need a fire to melt their waxy seed coat.  No recent fires on these sites though so my theory is Cockatoos and Rosellas are doing the seed treatment by dropping partially chewed seeds from the trees while feeding. (I am open to other suggestions)

Mass Silver Wattle Germination.
Mass Silver Wattle Germination.

Lyrebirds are pretty active at the site and no doubt will scratch the vast majority of the new seedlings out of existence.

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