Tag: kawakawa

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End-of-winter sale – Native plants half-price tomorrow on Glenfield Rd

Tomorrow, Sunday 1st September, we will be selling our remaining large Kawakawa and Carex flagellifera at half-price: $5 for the 12-15cm pots and $4 for the 10cm pots, at our native plant stand on Glenfield Rd opposite the petrol station….while stocks last.

Kawakawa fruit are a big drawcard for kereru. Male and female trees are needed for fruiting, and you can’t tell which is which until they flower at about 4 years of age, so plant half a dozen. They grow in sun or shade but do best in part shade, and need moist soil in summer. The kawakawa left of centre and on the right below are growing wild among Carex and other natives.

Carex flagellifera self-seed and multiply by division, filling a space to hold the soil and crowd out weeds . They are tolerant of dry or wet soil, in full sun or part shade. These have multiplied in a gap between harakeke on Glenfield Rd, and karamu are growing wild with them:

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Plant stand open Sunday 4th August

As usual, from about 10am at Gahnia Grove on Glenfield Rd opposite the petrol station.

About 20 large Carex flagellifera left, still at $8 each, with plenty of small ones now at $5 each. Only a few of the Carex lambertiana left, all small, at $5, and only 36 small kawakawa left till the next lot grow a bit more.

Kawakawa and other small trees are $3 each or 4 for $10.

ripening and unripe kawakawa overhanging Carex outside dining room window
kereru in kawakawa
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Large Carex flagellifera for $8 at our Glenfield Rd Plant Stand

The North Shore Wilds native plant stand will be open tomorrow Sunday, opposite the petrol station on Glenfield Rd, from about 10am. Our larger plants need to be well rooted in damp ground before summer drought (unless they will be watered), so the largest Carex flagellifera have been reduced from $10-12 to $8.

Carex have long hair-like roots that penetrate and stabilize clay soils. Grown close together, in full sun or shade, they form dense hardy tufts that can be occasionally walked on, preventing soil compaction and erosion in wet weather.

Their seeds are the natural habitat for tiny… and harmless… native Carex beetles, which I have seen only a few times. I was amazed that this species had survived the 20 years since I sourced and planted these in my own garden.

Like most of our other plants, these are grown from seed ecosourced from the Kaipatiki area.

The photo shows three species of wild Kaipatiki-native Carex allowed to grow as they will, spreading to cover previously bare clay under a planted kawakawa and a wild nikau, in an 80cm wide strip of soil outside a dining room window that gives a great view of kereru feeding in the kawakawa in summer. (We still have small kawakawa trees for $3 each or 4 for $10.)

Our spaces are shrinking, but we can still have wild beauty !

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Kawakawa “special” – small plants 4 for $10 today

Today at the plant stand on Glenfield Rd we have a “special” – 4 of the $3 kawakawa for $10. Kawakawa enjoy close plant communities and can be seen wild – or planted – in groups, under shade trees, and among other small trees and shrubs.

Having several of them gives you a better chance of having both a male and a female tree. Only the female trees will bear fruit.

Both male and female trees are needed for pollination of the flowers so they produce fruit. I dont know how near they need to be to each other. More info at northshorewilds.co.nz

ripe and unripe kawakawa fruit
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Native plants from $3 today Sunday at Gahnia Grove, Glenfield Rd

The North Shore Wilds native plant stand will be open again tomorrow (Sunday) from about 10am, at the Gahnia Grove restoration project on Glenfield Rd opposite the petrol station (where the strawberry stand is in summer).

We still have kawakawa, karamu, a few other treees and shrubs, Carex (“grasses”) and some groundcovers, small ones for $3, with the larger pots priced accordingly.

All are ecosourced from the Kaipatiki area, and grown in composting twig/leaf mulch and woodchips, without added chemicals. Many pots contain live earthworms, and all contain live soil fungi etc, so they are best suited to planting in the ground.

We also welcome enquiries about our chemical-free weed-control and general landcare. The Gahnia Grove restoration project is handy for showing examples of our weed-control methods and the resulting natural forest regrowth.

We can assess your own site, and show you how to control weeds, improve soil and produce your own locally-wild native plants for free. Or we can do it for you. For large bare areas freed from weeds, we can provide free potted plants to our landcare customers.

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Free container-grown plants for planting in Autumn

We have re-activated our little cottage nursery that supplied Council restoration projects and home gardens from about 2004-2006. Hundreds of native seeds fall and grow, even in our own little garden and gravel driveway, so we have been potting them up in recycled pots with roughly-composted wood chip mulch so our garden restoration clients can have free plants for planting season (or earlier if they have a loose soil and are prepared to water them…but Autumn is much easier!)

We are now offering 10-20 plants (depending on size), in a limited range of species – this year we concentrated on kawakawa, karamu, nikau and Carex – free with every 10 hours of gardening or habitat restoration, while stocks last.

We will look after the plants till autumn.

Here’s what they look like at present:

North Shore Wilds nursery plants, November 2023
NSW nursery plants November 23
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Kawakawa fruit are beginning to ripen

Following the development of the kawakawa fruit observed in earlier posts, I noticed a few ripe fruit on the tree outside this dining room window.

ripening and unripe kawakawa seen through open dining room window

In summer kereru clamber in the taller branches of the tree, alone, in pairs, and one year with a chick, all within a metre of this window.

Fortunately for the kereru, who are far too trusting for their own good, a dog keeps the garden cat-free, and the dog can’t reach this part of the garden.

A low branch outside the window has ripening and unripe fruit overhanging purei (Carex lambertiana)

Above: a fully ripe kawakawa fruit, found half-eaten on the ground, discloses the many seeds within the orange flesh of a single fruit

The wood of the kawakawa is soft, easily pruned to keep this paved path clear.

Wild native sedges and grasses and moss are allowed to cover the earth under the tree, and the smaller plants are allowed to spread to fill the gaps between paving tiles, keeping out most of the dandelions, creeping buttercup and other weeds.

The native kawakawa looper makes holes in the kawakawa leaves.

These holes are said to correspond to the leaves with the strongest medicinal value, perhaps because of substances produced in those leaves in response to the caterpillars eating the leaves.

Another explanation is that the caterpillars know which leaves are the best to eat.

Either way, this 2 square metres of clay is cool and refreshing to look out on through hot summers, hosts a lot of wildlife, lets morning light play on the windows all year round, and, with fallen leaves and twigs mulching the ground naturally, requires almost no attention to stay beautiful and weed-free.

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More about Kawakawa – male flowers fully mature now!

This male kawakawa tree on the forest edge now has fully mature flowers, some with the pollen being shed as a white dust, coating leaves … and hands:

male kawakawa flowers
mature male kawakawa flower with pollen
photo of mature male kawakawa flowers
mature flowers on male kawakawa

Meanwhile, in our garden the male flowers don’t have much pollen dust yet.

If you look really closely at the flowers on the female trees you can see the little receptacles that will receive the pollen from the male trees.

kawakawa unripe fruit

The black dots that form on the female flowers will eventually become seeds once the fruits are ripe in Spring or Summer.

In late Spring the kereru will start visiting daily to check out the fruit for ripeness

starting the season by eating the orange ends of partially ripe ones

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Is my Kawakawa tree male or female?

Last week, visiting an area we had freed from honeysuckle and other weeds in 2019, we were delighted to see the first flowering of a male kawakawa.

We were surprised to see it mature so soon after we had planted it in 2020 as a 10 cm high seedling.

The same tree is pictured below, then 20-30cm high, in December 2020. Beside it are wild native Weeping grass, toatoa, and (behind, on the remnants of a harakeke shade fence) the common harmless weed “cleavers”.

Both in the wild and in our home garden, we love to see the Kawakawa flowers forming each year, the female trees promising to attract kereru once fruit have formed in early Summer.

We see two distinct forms in the flowers, because kawakawa is one of those trees that can be either male or female. Both produce long thin flower spikes – the tiny dots are flowers -but only the female produces fruit.

The flower spikes of male trees are longer, thinner and upright, like candlesticks. Below are male kawakawa in various stages of flowering:

In contrast, the flower spikes on female trees are shorter and stouter, and in Summer will gradually turn entirely orange to become a soft, juicy fruit enjoyed by blackbirds, thrushes, tui and kereru.

Below are female kawakawa trees with fruit in various stages of development:

kereru have already eaten the riper ends of some of these partially ripe fruit
kereru with kawakawa fruit in beak

This year we will try to remember to get a good photo of fully ripe fruit. Finding a whole fully ripe fruit in this tree can be difficult, since at least one kereru checks out the unripe crop each year, visiting frequently thereafter to nibble on a few unripe fruit. Once the fruit reach the partially-ripe stage pictured above, one or several kereru visit the tree many times a day, and spend a lot of time in it eating.

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