Episode 33 Grass, Iris and Lily

First of all, I would like to apologise for the sound quality.  I thought it would be better to get another episode out while my Mac is still working.  The warning at the beginning of the episode pertains to about a minute of content.  

https://www.diggers.com.au/products/coastal-spear-grass 

www.britannica.com/plant/grass 

https://sensiseeds.com/en/blog/naming-cannabis-the-indica-versus-sativa-debate/ 

https://lizzieharper.co.uk/2023/07/common-grass-species-identification-some-easy-shortcuts/ 

Kuranga.com.au/plant-category/native-grass-australian-varieties-landscaping-gardens/ 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hi, my name is Danny and I am a horticulturalist. Welcome to my little podcast, Leaves, Stems and Roots. Hello, my dear leaflets. This episode does come with a warning.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

We are going to be talking about a particular drug. I'm not going to be talking anything about the drug. I am talking it as a plant. I'm sure you can actually work out which drug I am talking about, but I thought I'd just let you know. Episode 33. Iris, lily, and grass. Quote, a human being is a part of a whole called by us the universe. Albert Einstein. Hello, my dear leaflets. First of all, I forgot to quote on Episode 32. So the above quote from Mr. Science is due to being slack. Last month I had the largest downloads ever. So I thank you. If you are new, please listen to the backlog. And if you're a sporadic listener, please just rate and review the episode you listen to. You can reach out through email, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, although I think the only followers there is my other account being Art and two other actual friends. On with it! What is the grass? Why is this episode about grasses, lilies, and iris? Aren't they all completely different? Yes and no. Yeah, confusion again. I'm gonna talk about grass first. Definition time. Grass is having jointed stems, sheathing leaves, and seed like grains. They are monocotoledons. True grasses are what is growing in your backyard. And if it's anything like mine, it's up to your knees. Sedges are a part of the Cypheraceae family and a type of grass. They are flowering monocotolidons plants. I'm sorry I'm pronouncing that really weirdly. I think I'm just doing it fast so it'll sound like I actually know what I'm doing. There are about 5,500 described species worldwide with 90 genera. There are a few that are native to Australia. Sedges are found near water systems, either providing habitat for frogs and beneficial insects, or as a food source for toads and some caterpillars. You may have heard and seen caryx, which is generally used as a ground cover. There are a lot that are using in landscape and in pots and others also known as weeds. We then have rushes. They have four hundred and sixty-four species with about seven genre. They look superficially like sedges and some grass. They are monocotyled and herbaceous plants. Family name juncasia. There are two genre native to Australia with 83 species. Russians often get a raw deal because a lot of them are seen as weeds. However, they are wonderful and are used for preventing erosion, filtering water for fauna and flora. The most common one used for this is Juncus eusatia. The real difference between sedges, rushes, and true grasses is their stems. True grasses have hollow stems known as calms with nodes, whereas the other two do not. Do we still call them grasses? Yes, in the whole scheme of things, the family tree of grasses is huge. What confuses us is there are many things that we call grasses that are definitely lock uh uh not. As I said at the beginning of the episode, the grass in your backyard is true grasses. Cerea crops, turf and bamboo are all examples of true grass. There are 10,000 species and 660 genera. So yeah, a lot. And across the world there are only five of this, which covers almost forty eight percent of the world's surface. Do you want to think about which ones they are? I reckon you could guess it. If you guessed rice, wheat, maize, barley, and sugarcane, give yourself a gold star. But Danny, you are talking horticulture, not agriculture. True, but in the whole scheme of things they should be interchangeable. We are not going to get into the economical turn of the world's agricultural industry, but if you want to learn more about the different broad acre crops, please do. There are many native grasses which are from the Poesi family, which is a type of grass. These would include kangaroo grass, which is Thermida Triandra, Cospia grass, Astrotapa stipoides, common tussoc grass, Poa labelladaria, and nobly club rush, which is hilarious, sorry, and wullaby grass, which is oh I cannot say that, right today species. If you Google native grasses, however, there is uh on the list which is not a grass at all. Lamanja species, known as spiny headed matrush. But of course this is a native, yes indeedy, but it is not a grass. Then what is it? It is a part of the asparagus family. Really? Looks nothing like asparagus. I know. The asparagus family is part of a bigger family, the lily. I know, right? Anyway, there are other common names grass that are just not, and this is when we come down to Iris and Lily. There are a lot of common names with the name grass in it. And would you be surprised to learn that they are not grasses at all? Or strappy plants that are tufted, one might presume. They are grasses. So what am I talking about? Okay, there are fifteen genera of lilies, and there are about six hundred and ten flowering plants. Other grassy plants from the asparagus plants, which is known as bluebell family, which is lovely, and therefore the lily family are the following, which I'm sure you all have heard of Liriope, Mondograss, a bit of misnobell in the name, and another one is Dionellers. I had a lecturer once who was annoying because even though I introduced myself as Danny, he automatically called me Danielle, which is really annoying because if anyone actually calls me that they get a punch in the nose. But I didn't with him, I was being very mature. However, one day he decided that his new nickname for me was Dianella, which was very odd. He was an odd duck, ended up with a brain aneurysm, which is neither here nor there, but very interesting bloke. Dianellas are known as flaxlilies. Another one is chocolate lily, Dicopogan strictus, and the evil of all plants Agapanthus. Clivias are lilies as well as cordoline, nymphophia, arthropodium, and the water lily nympatia. There are many more, but I will have a comprehensive list in the show notes. Back to Cliveas. I actually call them Clivias. That was the first time I'd said Clivias, so it's very weird. And I think it's because I have many clients that actually call them clivias and not clivias, but I learnt them through the native nursery which I used to work at, and he used to say clivias. So who knows? Anyway, it's where you come from, I guess. Which brings us to Iris. My parents have a beard at Iris, which flowers without fail around my sister's birthday in October. Iridaceae is a large family of over 2,000 species, and some of which have been known to be confused as tufty grassy type plants. Like what, Danny? Dietes. This is a pig of a plant. I actually hate it. If you accidentally plant this and want to get rid of it in a few years later, it's not great digging up, and then it leaves little seedlings everywhere. Watsonia, the weed, which is more weed than grasses. Talking of weed or grass or ganja, pot, Mary Jane, Molly, yes, I thought I'd finish off with the thing that is called cannabis marijuana. But did you know that it isn't a grass at all? It doesn't behave at all like grass. Its growth patterns are multi-stemmed. It has been known to be mistaken as a tomato plant, and no they are not related either. For your information, cannabis is from the family cannabase, commonly known as the hemp family. There are 170 species of this family, which includes hops and hackberries. Within the genus cannabis, there are three species. Apparently there has been contention between two. Powers of B, or maybe in this case C, are still fighting about the differences. Maybe they need to get better air filters. So what do I have growing in my garden? My poor garden is so neglected at the moment. Grass is knee high. My Allegine Hugly, known as either the native hibiscus or blue hibiscus, has died. It was huge and it's just died. And it is not. I looked it up and it only lasts usually about eight years. This is very sad. However, the apple tree is in the same area as doing gangbusters. I ended up getting a new hot water system and my poor post danthra and poor man's roadie got the worst of it. Poor man's roadie always reminds me of the caravan park I used to stay at as a kid. The rose geranium is doing great though, as well as my iris and dianella. The Daphne has survived, which is excellent, as well as most of my salvias. My veggie garden is very sparse. I do have the native spinach and silver beet, and I have been getting sporadic fruit on my strawberries, which has been delightful. I finally figured out my watering system, so my annuals and herbs are surviving. I salvaged a parsley and a chamomile from the sails, and they are waiting in the rain to be potted up. My kitchen compost is smelling the best it has in a long time. I've actually got it back on my back porch and it's doing much better. So I just wanted to say that my next episode hopefully won't take as long as this one. It just fascinates me the different types of foliage we get all through Australia. So because I was up there, I am going to actually use that opportunity to talk about narang and uh Gold Coast and just Queensland plants, which makes me think that I'll probably do that for the rest of the country as well. And then we might get over to other different parts of the world, which will be exciting. Anyway, um, so that is what I've done. And hopefully, next time, as I said, it won't take as long to get out. I've been having problems with my computer as well as my microphone. So I'm doing this in a very weird position, and I'm hoping it won't sound too weird. I apologize for the sound that is going to happen. All right, until next time, my dear leaflets. Toodle oo.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

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