APS Victoria 50th Anniversary Dinner Quarterly Weekend and COM Meeting Report

Cathy and I attended the Committee meeting, some local garden visits and the Anniversary Dinner at the Bentleigh Club on Saturday, March 17. Despite an arduous start, finding the meeting a bit long-winded in places, the day turned out to be quite enjoyable, with pleasant cool, sunny weather, good company and interesting things to keep our attention. The meeting was first on the agenda, pretty typical as meetings go, see the details below. As a result, we missed out on the morning activity, a visit to Karkarook Park. After a spot of lunch to clear the cobwebs out, we joined the rest of the gathering for some flying visits to 3 local private gardens, Louden’s at Highett, Thompson’s at Hampton and Turner’s at McKinnon. All were worth a look, with unusual plants and different landscaping, the dry weather having a noticeable effect on all of them. The Dinner was a well attended and well organized affair, the floral decorations by Norma Bathie and Cathy’s cake were the stand-outs. John Walter gave us a summary of the SGAP History book, the food was enjoyable, the drink adequate, the conversation stimulating and the drive home long. Due to commitments at Morwell NP on Sunday, we couldn’t stay for the visit to Maranoa Gardens.

Without going into too much detail, which will no doubt be covered by the minutes, here are what I think are the most relevant points of the meeting, as far as APS LV are concerned:

• 70% of the $10,000 loan for the Dryandra book has been recouped already, with the remainder expected in the next few months. Beyond that, it’s all profit. While on the subject of dryandras, it seems a paper has been presented and accepted by the Perth Herbarium to relegate all the Dryandra species back into the Banksia genus. Along similar lines in the ACT, Callistemon will disappear back into Melaleuca.
• The Garden Advisory Manual is nearing completion, with quotes for production being sought. At this stage it looks as if it will cost $7,000 to $8,500 for 1000 copies with retail to be $15-$25.
• Moves are afoot to look into purchasing an APS Vic domain name for the website. District Groups are asked to submit up-to-date information for the website and Growing Australian.
• A paid secretariat in our own right is highly unlikely due to economics. The committee is looking into sharing facilities with other organizations, such as BOCA.
• There is a proposal to donate to RBG Cranbourne. Any suggestions on how much, what for (eg seating, plant labels, interpretive signs) and whether we should expect recognition advertising or not?
• John Walter will be putting APS Vic historical information on Microfish for cutting onto CD to be housed at the Herbarium. He has offered a similar service for District Groups. Do we want to take advantage of his offer?
• Inside window stickers are still on the agenda, but $480 for 200 was considered a bit steep, more research required.
• APS Mildura has successfully applied for their Stage 2 grant of $1000 for establishment of a Rare and Endangered Plant bed at Mildura Botanic Garden.
• An APS Vic membership fee increase of $2 across the board will apply for the next financial year.
• A new District Group, the Mid-Murray Group, has been established at Kerang, with an expected membership of 65+. Contact details for the Leader (to send newsletters for example) are: Meredith Farley, Cappels Crossing, Kerang.
• By far the longest part of the meeting was devoted to a proposal by ‘concerned members’ to arrest our declining membership. I’ll go into more detail at our next meeting, suffice to say a couple of resolutions were carried, others ignored, but the result will be a sub-committee of the ‘concerned members’ carrying out a membership growth plan. Initially this will be at executive level, but down the track the District Groups will be asked to participate at a local level. Please give some consideration to taking on some of the tasks when they arrive.

Stinging Nettles are Not All Bad by Ken Harris

I have for a long time known that the Scrub Nettle Urtica incisa is the food plant for the caterpillars of the Australian Admiral butterfly Vanessa itea. This means that almost every time I pass any nettles, I give them a quick once over for caterpillars.

I have done this for some years without success, but on 31st August 2006, I did find a lot of caterpillars feeding on the nettles. I knew at once that they were not Australian Admirals, but I had no idea what they were (or would become). Here is the very hairy caterpillar that I found.

I decided to see if I could rear the caterpillars and thus find out which moth they would become, so I took two caterpillars home and put them in a jar with several stems of stinging nettles.

The caterpillars fed avidly on the nettles, but the nettles of course wilted fairly quickly in the jar and I had to collect more nettles after 3 days.

I kept collecting stinging nettles every 3 days for most of a month. Not a simple matter and very few changes of nettle occurred without my getting a few stings along the way.

The caterpillars grew and changed in appearance, so that on 18th September, after 18 days, they looked like this.

As they grew nearer to pupating, I had to make a guess as to where they would like to pupate. I had a suspicion that they were a Tiger Moth of the genus Spilosoma and that led me to suspect that they would pupate among leaf and bark litter on the ground. I therefore provided a layer of dead leaves, bark and twigs in the bottom of the jar.

At about the end of September they completed their caterpillar phase and both weaved a cocoon, incorporating the hairs from their final caterpillar stage and in this cocoon became a chrysalis or pupa.

Here is one of the cocoons with all the bark and leaves incorporated into it.

At this stage I removed the remnants of the nettles and placed three or four twigs in the jar, so that if a moth emerged it would have something to perch on. I then kept the jar in a spot where I would look at it every day so that I would not miss the emergence of the moth.

It was not until 15th February, that I was delighted to find that one of the moths had emerged, 5½ months after I first found the caterpillar, and what a beautiful moth it proved to be.

I was right in guessing it to be a Tiger Moth in the genus Spilosoma. It proves to be the Black and White Tiger Moth Spilosoma glatignyi, but all the references I could find, listed a lot of food plants for this moth, but none mentioned stinging nettles.

In Morwell National Park, the scrub nettle is an important food plant for this moth, as once I had seen the caterpillars once, I found them on almost every patch of nettles in the park and there are plenty of them as the Friends well know (some from bitter experience).

While I was rearing these caterpillars, I continued to look at every patch of nettles, seeing a lot more of the same caterpillars, but on 19th September, I finally found the caterpillar I had been searching for, an Australian Admiral butterfly’s caterpillar.

It looked a pretty well developed caterpillar and it was on the stem of a nettle, very near the top.

I thought I would put it in the jar with the other caterpillars (to share their nettles), but I kept it in a plastic bag over night, so that I could take some more pictures, before adding it to the jar. When I went to get it the next morning, I found the caterpillar curled back on itself and firmly attached to the plastic bag. I thought it had started to pupate, so I left it in the plastic bag and by the evening when I next looked it had formed itself into this lovely chrysalis, which was firmly attached to the plastic bag.

In order to support the chrysalis, I had to cut a piece out of the plastic bag and wrap it round a piece of garden stake, using sticky tape to fix it in place.

I kept the stick with the chrysalis on it free standing in our family room and I did not have to wait 5½months for this one to emerge. After only 2 weeks Fay told me there was a butterfly flying around the room and sure enough, the chrysalis was empty and I found a beautiful Australian Admiral butterfly perched on the curtain. I didn’t try and photograph the butterfly, I simply let it free in the garden, but here is a picture of an Australian Admiral that I took in 1995.

So next time you collect a few stings from the nettles, remember that there is a beautiful moth and a beautiful butterfly depending on them for food and so they make a very positive contribution to our park.