Thanks to everyone who got behind our trial Box Gum Grassy Woodland groundcover purchase. I hope your groundcovers grow well and reproduce for the future.

It was awesome of Oz Plants and the Weddin Community nursery to try growing these to order for us. As anticipated there were some unsuccessful germinations but recently an extra 2 species have started coming up and these should be ready late Winter/early Spring. Overall we ended up with 7 of the 11 species growing.

You can check out all the species we tried here in our original post. It includes links to descriptions of each species which are all important species in our Box Gum Grassy Woodlands.

I thought we might focus on Amulla or Winter Apple (Eremophila debilis) in this post. My first introduction to it was when I was out exploring a TSR (travelling stock reserve) and it really struck me. It has these bright pink fruit during the Winter months that must be important to plenty of native species. Now that I have had it planted in my garden for a few years I have noticed the Eastern Rosella’s and even the odd King Parrot that look to be feeding on the fruit.

This plant is frost tolerant and is described as drought hardy. I haven’t given mine any extra care and they are spreading well and have even germinated a couple of new ones.

They are edible but I find them a bit on the bitter side with quite a large seed and not much flesh. They are described as ‘Small green fruits approximately 8mm in size that appear in autumn/winter either turning white or pink when ripe. The fruit has an appearance of a tiny apple with a similar crispy texture and sweet taste.’

I purchased about 30 of them during this community opportunity and I am in the process of planting them in some of my revegetation sites on the farm. Can’t wait to see how they go.

Apparently Amulla is not unpalatable to stock and can be heavily grazed at times even with it’s low growth-habit. It is not a common species but this could be due to the fact that it is palatable and has now been grazed out of many sites where it may have previously grown. Each plant can live for 10-20 years, which is amazing, and one plant will cover an area of about a square meter in a couple of years.

The Weddin nursery propagated 243 of these Amulla which are in the process of being collected and planted across 16 farms in our region.

All up including the Amulla 964 plants have been successfully propagated with a further 250 coming up now. If you haven’t already collected your order from the nurseries don’t forget. Please let me know if you are having trouble getting to either of the nurseries to collect and I’ll see if I can help.

We would love to hear how your plants are growing and where you have planted them so please let me know and send us some pictures 🙂