A hot threatening day saw ten of us hard at work at our project of counting the flowerheads of this unusual plant. When the monitoring began here back in 1987, the plant was listed as endangered. It has now been ‘downgraded’ but is still a listed plant of interest.
Stan Parfett had always organised these monitoring days and to our embarrassment we learned that we hadn’t paid as much attention as we should have. So it took some time to get ourselves going. Since 1997 we have been comparing the actual flower heads (not just the individual plants) in various patches; some out in the open, some protected by small cages, some in a large ‘exclude just rabbits’ area, some in a large ‘exclude large animals’ area, and some in a ‘exclude all grazers’ area.
After the wet spring and early summer we were hopeful of a good crop, and so it turned out to be. Either 3,973 or 4,127 – there’s 154 which may have been counted twice- red faced tally clerk. We also think the flowers were late this year with the cool conditions and we may have missed some very young buds. I think this is our second highest tally. I’ll have details for those interested, broken down into the zones, and I’m waiting on rainfall records to complete the report which goes to the Herbarium in Melbourne. One trend appears to be that protecting some plants has also increased the unprotected ones. My guess is that seeds are being disbursed into the area.
The damp summer meant that there was a wealth of other grassy woodland plants in flower: yellow lilies, various daisies, billy buttons, featherheads, chocolate lilies, pelagoniums …..
Afterwards Stan’s nephew gave us a briefcase full of notes Stan had made over the years, which will enable us to be much better organised next time – or so we hope!
It was quite a sentimental exercise going through the case. There were notes of the hair tube surveys we did back in 1999, FOGG and Threatened Species posters from years back – Platypus lectures, plant searches, history of Zumsteins ……..