Australian Native Grass Seed Production

Sowing Danthonia May 2009.

With the demand for native grass seed increasing and its availability decreasing, remnant grasslands are under more pressure as sources of indigenous seed. With a lack of consistent rainfall over the last few years some native grass species have produced very little seed and the steady rate of remnants that are lost to development make seed harder to obtain.

These pressures on native grasslands, along with the weed seed often associated with the harvesting of remnant grasslands are some of the reasons that Flora Victoria has started large-scale production of native grass seed sourced from the Basalt Plains to the North and West of Melbourne.

The seed we are producing has been collected from large healthy populations within a 40 km radius of Melbourne on basalt soils starting from Little River, up to Melton and across to Yan Yean.

Flora Victoria has commenced the sowing of several species and hopes to have some seed available for sale next year. Large quantities of seed will probably not be available until 2011.

Some of the species that have been sown and will be available by 2011 are:

Danthonia (a mix of species that will be announced)

Chloris truncata

Bothriochloa macra

Dicanthium sericeum

Themeda triandra

Poa labillardieri

Microlaena stipoides

Dichelachne crinita

This is a photo of our Danthonia crop taken in Febuary 2010.

This is the same shot taken in October 2010. Although it is advisable to keep sown areas as clean as possible, these photos demonstarate that it is often possible to control weeds when the situation looks beyond salvaging.