To bring winter colour into native gardens, as simple, stand-alone feature plants in the middle of a lawn just keep it 1m clear of the trunk , as contrasting fillers in blue gardens. They can become environmental weeds in temperate zones — a light trim straight after flowering will prevent seeds spreading. Also the lovely Cootamundra Wattle is classed as a weed is most areas.
Grass pollen floats through the air and is more likely to be the culprit! Graham's favourite is the coastal myall Acacia glaucescens which is hardy and long-lived, with red bark, silver foliage and long yellow rods of flower.
This one is okay for pots too. Visit our Nursery Partners in winter and spring, or see specialist native plant growers such as the Sydney Wildflower Nursery year-round. A small tree with weeping branches of bright green foliage. The best arguments for Wattle Day need to take into account the present economic and cultural insecurity experienced by a significant number of Australians which needs to be balanced by a celebration of hope and common purpose.
The economic insecurity largely comes from Australia opening itself up to competition with the world in recent years and was less prevalent in the comfortable s, s and s.
The need for increased competitiveness is more-or-less a consensus position of Australian politics, but many people have been adversely affected, at least in the short term. Another, often unspoken problem is a combination of cultural confusion and erosion. Our children and the rest of us have always tried to ignore the chronic cultural disorientation of being 'Down Under', especially in regard to the important national holidays. To illustrate the point, our Easter is full of symbols of early Spring egg, young rabbits, chicks, etc.
Australia's Christmas is very mixed up, with a warmly wrapped 'Santa' and his sleigh now commonly teamed with waratah and holly leaf decorations on supermarket windows! Australia Day itself is seen by some as a NSW-dominated celebration, as largely an opportunity for a multicultural display, or as a marking of the invasion of the continent by Europeans. The Queen's Birthday Holiday has become controversial.
There is no national Labor Day. Children know something about an overseas May Day, the may queen and the may pole of the European high Spring but there is no equivalent national Spring festival here.
The only national folk day of universal acceptance is Anzac Day. An example of cultural erosion affecting young and old is the increasing foreign sell-off of traditional Australian company icons. If we add to the above the invasion of American culture, now accelerating through television and computer networks, together with national confusion over whether we are or should be Asian or Asianised, it can be argued that a celebration of 'Australianness' symbolised by wattle, the popular national floral emblem which is not for sale combined with a celebration of the coming of Spring could be a very special occasion every year.
An added attraction is that Wattle Day dates back more than eighty years and is a part of Australia's history. Wattle and Wattle Day can symbolise virtually anything we want, but they relate generally to Spring, being Australian, the Australian environment, and history. Spring has many positive values such as optimism, bounty and abundance, reliability, colour, new life and so on. We can celebrate our 'Australianness' on Wattle Day in quite a different way from Anzac Day, which in recalling past wars glorifies Australian qualities of courage and mateship.
Wattle Day, by contrast, looks forward to Spring and can celebrate the nation's undoubted qualities of good humour, fairness, generosity, informality and democracy.
Wattle Day should be a simple, sentimental and uncomplicated occasion - the last thing wanted is long, boring ceremonies. In the ACT the Day will certainly be marked by Red Cross badges, book marks and perhaps other merchandise for fundraising promotion by that organisation.
This is certain to raise the local profile of the day for adults, and for many this would make it equivalent in status to Poppy Day, Daffodil Day or Red Nose Day. The word "wattle" was originally an Anglo-Saxon word that referred particularly to a pliant woody branch or a barrier made from such branches. Early British settlers around Port Jackson now Sydney used the pliant stems and branches of local trees as wattles to make the framework for their homes which were daubed with mud.
These early homes were called "wattle-and-daub" huts. The word "wattle" was then used to describe the trees and shrubs used for wattles, and it soon became a word used almost exclusively for species of Acacia. Common names for different species of wattle often describe how the bark or foliage looks or smells; such as Black Wattle or Green Wattle Acacia mearnsii , Flax Wattle Acacia linifolia and Sweet Wattle or Sweet-scented Wattle Acacia suaveolens.
Sometimes very different looking Acacia species have the same common name which can be confusing. For example black wattle is used to describe both Acacia mearnsii from south-eastern Australia and Acacia auriculiformis a tropical species from Qld and NT.
Many wattles have aboriginal names and some of the most prominent are Boree, Boree Wattle or Western Myall Acacia pendula and several similar species , Mulga Acacia aneura and several other species , Nelia or Nealie Acacia loderi and Yarran Acacia omalophylla , sometimes spelled as Acacia homalophylla.
Indigenous Australians used wattles routinely for a very wide range of purposes: from food and medicines, to utensils such as digging sticks and barbs, weapons clubs, shields, boomerangs, spear throwers, spear shafts and heads , for musical instruments such as clap sticks; firewood, ash, glues, string, dyes and waterproofing, sandals and head decorations, ceremonial items and seasonal signals.
More information. On 1 September the Sydney Morning Herald stated: "To many Australians the wattle stands for home, country, kindred, sunshine and love, every instinct that the heart most deeply enshrines.
Wattles grow in nearly all parts of the Australian continent and Tasmania and often clothe the countryside with masses of green and bright golden yellow particularly in springtime in southern Australia. Most northern Australian species flower during Autumn and Winter but a few flower during spring. Wattles are very prominent in arid Australia but uncommon in dense rain forests and alpine regions. In some places, wattles are dominant, particularly in some of the drier regions of the continent but in others they inhabit only the shrub layers in woodlands and forests, especially in eastern, south-eastern Australia and far south-western Western Australia.
Western Australia has about different wattles and most of these occur in the south-western part of the State.
Most wattles live in dry, arid, tropical or sub-tropical regions but two species occur high up in the Australian and Tasmanian alpine and subalpine regions. One of these, Acacia alpina Alpine Wattle is confined to the montane and subalpine regions of the Australian Alps between 1, m 4, feet and about 1, m 6, feet and it ranges from Lake Mountain near Marysville in Victoria to Cabramurra in the Snowy Mountains, New South Wales with an isolated occurrence in the subalpine mountains in the south of the Australian Capital Territory.
The Variable Sallow Wattle Acacia mucronata , also known as the Narrow-leaved Wattle, reaches an altitude of about 1, m about 3, feet in Tasmania. Both of these wattles can survive under snow for months.
Most wattles are short-lived and will live no longer than years but a few are long-lived up to years. Photography by Tony Robinson.
Accessed on Friday, 15 July If you drive around the bush this time of the year, you can find wattles in full bloom in many different parts of Australia, particularly in the south east. They look spectacular with their massed yellow blooms brightening up the greenish-grey of the winter landscape. Wattles growing nearest the coast are generally the earliest in the year to flower, followed by those further inland.
Similarly, the tide of yellow sweeps from north to south, as the wattles in the northerly parts of Australia flower first, followed by the more southerly species. Fact file: When: July. Flinders Ranges, SA. Other info: First plant collected - Wattle expert Mr Bruce Maslin says it's likely that the first plant ever collected from the Australian continent was a wattle probably in by members of the Vlamingh expedition when they discovered the Swan River in Perth.
Wattles were also collected about 18 months later by William Dampier from the northwest of WA. About years later, Joseph Banks collected wattles during the Cook expedition in eastern Australia. The Acacia genus, which includes all the wattles, is the biggest group of trees and shrubs in Australia, topping even the eucalypts in diversity. They were part of the original Gondwana vegetation, which is why, today, acacias are also found in Africa, South America and India.
While plenty of acacias are found around the coast and tablelands, their real specialty is the arid areas. Acacias have a characteristic which is distinctive to Australia plants - an adaptation called scleromorphy, which describes the leathery, hard spiny or reduced leaves found on most plants in this group. The evolution of scleromorphy is believed to be an adaptation to poor soils and low or unpredictable rainfall.
As Australia became drier in the distant past, the tough wattle flourished and became the most widespread of all Australian plants. Wattles now grow in just about every habitat, except the subalpine areas.
The vast interior of Australia is dominated by a wattle - the mulga, Acacia aneura and its closely related species and varieties - which grows as a low shrub and flowers in immediate response to the rare rainfalls which may pass by.
But unlike their desert cousin, many of the more coastal acacias do much of their flowering during the winter. One of the best known winter-flowerers is the Cootamundra wattle, A. Although the distinct, fern-like silver grey foliage has made it a popular garden and street plant, it has become a pest in some areas.
The wattle originally came from a tiny area around Cootamundra and Temora in NSW but is now naturalised in many parts of Australia. The seeds survive for decades in the soil and will germinate in their thousands after a fire. Given the right conditions, it gets huge, shading out sunlight and stifling seedlings from growing. Overseas, the Cootamundra wattle is a popular street tree and can grow to an immense size in the absence of its native insect predators. Another well known wattle which can be found blooming from late winter through to spring is Australia's floral emblem, the golden wattle A.
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