Native grasses

The past 6 months or so I have been making a big effort to rid the property of the myriad of introduced broadleaf weed species -  cobblers pegs,  thickhead  and the like and encouraging the native grasses to take over.  In previous years I have simply slashed at the end of summer but with planting a lot more Lomandra, Dianella and clumping native grasses, plus the  growth of trees and shrubs, this is no longer practical.

There has been a dramatic regrowth of two native grass species :

Graceful Grass   or  Ottochloa gracillima

The picture doesn't do it justice - it forms quite a thick low growing mat but it will climb and cover logs and fallen branches however

The other is  Creeping Basket Grass   or  Oplismenius aemulius 

It has larger leaf form than the  Ottochloa and also has a flat mat like growth habit

I've also been collecting seeds from Kangaroo and other clumping grasses and have scattered them around and have set up some trays also for germinating them.

Hopefully if we can cover most of the property with native grasses the weeds will become less prominent.

ref :  Mangroves to Mountains (Revised Edition) by  Glen Leiper,  Jan Glazebrook, Denis Cox and Kerry Rathie   -  produced by SGAP 


Incidentally -  this is an excellent and very comprehensive field guide to Natives in SE Qld - I use it frequently and highly recommend it.   Copies can be purchased directly from the authors - please email me for details if interested.