Wildflower Walks in the Melbourne Sandbelt

[Matthew Mollica]

In the last month, I have been fortunate to visit two sandbelt golf courses and participate in walks around the course with the head super and ground staff, focusing on the native vegetation. These walks occur at several Clubs around this time of year, and focus primarily upon the Spring flowers which abound among the swathes of heath and vegetation bordering the playing areas The walks have shed an interesting light on the courses and the staff who care for them.



The level of knowledge possessed by the guys at Kingston Heath & Royal Melbourne in particular is astounding. They are acutely aware of many species, sometimes lying between tee and fairway, immediately adjacent to greens, or often dozens of metres from the fairways, in the most unlikely places. These species look like weeds to all but the uninitiated, and would easily be passed by or walked over by golfers mid-round. They can be as exotic as Donkey orchids, milk maids, chocolate lilies and green hooded orchids, ground covers like running postman, or more sizeable species like common heath, wedding bushes, or Xanthorrea minor. Native grasses such as Austrastipa are seen closer to the fairways, as are larger trees such as Leptospermum, Melaleuca, Acacia, Corymbia and Eucalypts.

Austral bracken


Green hooded orchids


The Sandbelt ground staff balance several important tasks. They eradicate poa from greens, set pins, maintain tees, collars, fairways and greens, and other tasks. They possess architectural knowledge and agronomic skill. They also serve as custodians of very important repositories of beautiful native (and sometimes endangered) indigenous flora. They must juggle these responsibilities, ensuring an appropriate playing field, while also managing the local micro-environment. And the vast array of fauna that call this their home - a point highlighted in part by the many bird boxes, possum boxes and bat boxes in trees around some courses. And the establishment of a role for KH Botanist (Peter Murray).



(Note the total absence of any ground level vegetation beneath the non-indigenous Cypress tree in the distance, in stark contrast to the adjacent area between 7 & 17 greens).



RM's vegetation management is a little different to most other sandbelt clubs on close inspection. There are not large areas of exposed sand, as is becoming the norm at other courses in the region.

The area of tea-tree between 1W and 18E at RM has seen a thinning of the canopies, and removal of some trees in 2014. Somewhere between 500 and 800 tubestock has been planted so as to faithfully revegetate this zone, while not detracting from playability.

There are large areas of natural, unkempt native vegetation, which add a rich and unique texture to the East, and particularly, the West course. Bracken, heath, grasses, wildflowers, Banksia and other low-growing coastal shrubs, and native ground cover abound. Much to the excitement of non-golfing, botanically minded visitors who participated in these walks. And to those who think golf architecture nerds are a strange, excitable lot - the green thumbs are possibly more so!



At KH there have been several rare species nurtured and propagated, hopefully to the stage where their on-course numbers grown considerably for the next generation or two of golfers.



Chocolate lilies at KH


Below are some more images from the walks. If the opportunity arose for any of you to attend one of these walks in future, I would strongly recommend doing it. The chance to learn new things about a course, and develop a greater appreciation of the broad and detailed skills possessed by our course supers and their staff should not be missed.

The fascinating bird orchid. It has at it's centre a small, black, sent-emitting lobe which to male insects, seems like a female insect. The males enter, get pollen on their legs, then spreads the pollen when it visits the next plant!



Areas of remnant heathland, regenerating after a controlled burn years ago.


Wedding Bush


Heath


Xanthorrea minor - relative of the Grass Tree, which must be many years old.


Trigger plant


Bossiaea (Bush Pea or Egg & Bacon)


Milkmaids


MM

[Colin Macqueen]

Matthew,

A very nice alternate take on a round of golf!

It is a good advertising and public relations exercise that golf courses could do more of to sway the ill-informed public who think golf courses are poor environmental custodians. The keepers of the green in your two instances are obviously dedicated, passionate and informed. Great stuff.

The variety of species in Australia, once you know to some extent what you are looking at, is quite amazing. Victoria's precipitation that  "…. droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven." though at times a curse to the golfer is a blessing when it comes to bloom time in your "Garden State". What would I not give in drought stricken Queensland for some of your rainfall!

Nice thread.

Cheers Colin

[Brett_Morrissy]

great thread MM, have it to do list. It could be a mandatory knowledge for most greens committees, especially at KH, whom I have been lead to believe are leaders in this area.

[Neil_Crafter]

Nice tour MM. Should be mandatory reading for the econuts who bemoan the impact of golf courses in our cities. But without golf to conserve these open spaces they would be covered in roads and houses.

[RJ_Daley]

What a wonderful, informative post by a passionate and proud Kingston Heath member!  Happy Spring Matthew.  During our day there I could hear your enthusiasm for the beautiful diversity of KH's envioronmental footprint, and it all flew by so fast that I couldn't process all the mentions of various gum trees and bird songs we were hearing.  I need more time on the ground with the proud and knowledgeable member host!   

[Mike_Clayton]

Matt,Neil

The amazing thing is you could go out and blow all these beautiful and important plants up today and most would not say a word - or even notice.
A tree on the other hand and the same members are chaining themselves to it.

[Neil_Crafter]

Well as they say Clayts size does matter! In plants as in other things.

[Thomas Dai]

Nice idea and well reported.

Something I spotted recently in England -



atb

[Carl Johnson]

The subject interests me and I am happy to see that I am not alone.  People use terminology that's not always clear and consistent.  In golf course context we often speak of "native" areas or "natural" areas as a plus.  However, strictly speaking that's not always so when you get plants that aren't indigenous that become naturalized and invasive.  The following definitions from Wikipedia are useful, although some of the language is a little loose.  I'm no expert, but I suspect that even the experts disagree on terminology, particularly on the use of the term "native."  I'd love to see more golf courses focus on indigenous "wildflowers" in appropriate places.

Native plant is a term to describe plants endemic (indigenous) or naturalized to a given area in geologic time.  This includes plants that have developed, occur naturally, or existed for many years in an area (e.g. trees, flowers, grasses, and other plants). In North America a plant is often deemed native if it was present before colonization.  Some native plants have adapted to very limited, unusual environments or very harsh climates or exceptional soil conditions. Although some types of plants for these reasons exist only within a very limited range (endemism), others can live in diverse areas or by adaptation to different surroundings. . . .

Endemism is the ecological state of a species being unique to a defined geographic location, such as an island, nation, country or other defined zone, or habitat type; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsewhere. The extreme opposite of endemism is cosmopolitan distribution. Another term for a species that is endemic is precinctive, which applies to species (and subspecific categories) that are restricted to a defined geographical area.

Indigenous.  In biogeography, a species is defined as native (or indigenous) to a given region or ecosystem if its presence in that region is the result of only natural processes, with no human intervention. Every natural organism (as opposed to a domesticated organism) has its own natural range of distribution in which it is regarded as native. Outside this native range, a species may be introduced by human activity; it is then referred to as an introduced species within the regions where it was anthropogenically introduced.  An indigenous species is not necessarily endemic. In biology and ecology, endemic means exclusively native to the biota of a specific place. An indigenous species may occur in areas other than the one under consideration.  The terms endemic and indigenous do not imply that an organism necessarily originated or evolved where it is found.

Naturalized.  In biology, naturalization is any process by which a non-native organism spreads into the wild and its reproduction is sufficient to maintain its population. Such populations are said to be naturalized.  Some populations do not sustain themselves reproductively, but exist because of continued influx from elsewhere. Such a non-sustaining population, or the individuals within it, are said to be adventive.  Cultivated plants are a major source of adventive populations.  Naturalized species may become invasive species if they become sufficiently abundant to have an adverse effect on native plants and animals.

[Kyle Henderson]

Sadly, efforts to introduce and protect endangered native plant species on golf-related properties her in California would be likely to put the course  at risk of closure by environmentalists...

See Spanish Bay and Sharp Park as evidence.