When viewing our brilliant coastline, it is hard not to notice the beauty it possesses. From the iconic animals that depend on it, to the plants that aesthetically define it.
One of those wonderful plants is Hairy Spinifex- Spinifex sericeus. Not only can this plant create great nesting habitat for our beloved Hooded Plovers, but it is also our dunes front line in its defence against tidal activity.
Blown in by the wind the rounded seed heads made up of multiple seed spears get stuck and are covered by sand in order to grow new plants where other plants are often yet to colonise.
Hairy spinifex typically stands 30-40cm high with grey hairy leaves formed on runners that can extend 2-5m from the plants base. Spinifex uses these long finger-like runners to form a hand hold on the incipient dune, allowing the sand to move around and over the plant, but remain as stable as naturally possible.
However, this amazing pioneer plant needs a good base of existing plants to reproduce and replenish its often-depleted population, that has often been outcompeted by weeds like Marram Grass.
To make it more difficult than most other grasses to successfully propagate, Hairy Spinifex has separate male and female plants and for these plants to reproduce effectively they need to be approximately 2m or closer to each other.
It is due to its importance and challenges that I made it my own personal mission to learn how to successfully propagate Hairy Spinifex to restore our local dune plant populations. This year I have undergone trials with 4 different soil mixes, 2 different types of seed preparation and many hours of seed sorting and grading to help determine what method is best.
The results were very clear with a success rate that varied from less than 10% to greater than 75% depending on the soil mix alone.
With these results and the newly acquired knowledge we hope to help the magnificent people at SOLN propagate many hundreds of Spinifex seedlings for our community in the coming years.
