By Terri Allen
 
IT IS said that when the swamp paperbark is in bloom, the snapper are on the bite. They must be biting now because it has been magnificent this spring.
 
It flowered early this year, and we don’t yet know whether its pollinators were around to set the seed. My seed collectors group will be keeping an eye to see if the seed is viable. Swamp paperbark is so prolific that we don’t usually sow the seed, though we do include it in some direct seeding mixtures. We used it on the Rifle Range Reserve, of course.
 
I have long thought it should be Wonthaggi’s floral emblem. Wonthaggi was once a vast paperbark swamp interspersed with sheets of water and sand hills vegetated with heaths and eucalypts. 

A young eucalypt at the State Coal Mine commemorates the first European explorer to venture overland to the Wonthaggi plains. Terri Allen reports. ​

By Terri Allen

​Disa bracteata, formerly Monadenia bracteata, was found in January 2005 on regenerating heathland abutting the coastal reserve at the Wonthaggi Heathland. ​

​The weed-orchid from South Africa was first found in Albany, WA in 1944, thought to be brought in sacking covering goods at the port.  It spread northwards to Geraldton, eastwards to Esperance and to the edge of the wheat belt.  It is now naturalised in WA, SA and Victoria.

By Terri Allen

ONCE cottage gardeners espoused a yellow-flowered shrub as a hedge plant or garden specimen; this shrub Montpellier broom, Genista monspessulana, originated in Europe. ​

TERRI ALLEN pays tribute to a majestic messmate that has been part of her life for as long as she can remember. ​

The Wonthaggi Seed Bank started with a few local farmers planting shelter belts. Today it's helping to revegetate hundreds of hectares of public land. ​