The Collect, Sow and Grow Poroporo Project aims to help people assist in naturally regenerating native forest on the Port Hills after the February 2017 fire. Background to Collect, Sow and Grow Poroporo Project Introducing Poroporo Poroporo is a pioneering shrub species native to New Zealand. Pioneering means that it is a plant that grows relatively easily (an early coloniser) of bare ground after a disturbance such as the area around fallen trees after storms, slips after rain, rockfall scars after earthquakes, and burnt ground after fire. But there needs to be plenty of Poroporo seed nearby the affected area and the soil needs to be in the right condition. It also helps if birds fly over the affected area at the right time and poop the Poroporo seeds out so that they are able to germinate. Bracken a pioneering fern
Bracken is a pioneering fern. There is a species native to New Zealand, but other species are found on every continent except Antarctica, and all environments except the desert. Bracken is naturally regenerating in many places on the Port Hills after the fire, and will be left to grow where we want native forest to grow. It will provide shelter and pockets of soil underneath, where seeds dropped by birds can comfortably germinate and grow. What is being done with the really burnt areas? Where there is no bracken, or where the soils have been deeply burned, or where the introduced cocksfoot grass grows quickly, or where the seedlings of introduced gorse and broom grow back quickly, planting Poroporo at these sites in the spring from the Collect, Sow and Grow Project, will help the natural regeneration process along the way. The birds will do the rest! The Collect, Sow and Grow Project the pioneer plants need your help! Twenty groups of school children, university students and community gardens in Christchurch have been asked to help collect, sow and grow Poroporo as a trial to help the longer term natural regeneration process in the Port Hills after the fire. The Collect, Sow and Grow Poroporo project has been set up - Poroporo needs your help. Learn more about how to Collect, Sow and Grow Poroporo There are a few key steps for each of the stages along the way. 1
There is plenty to learn! Have fun!! Step 1: how to collect Poroporo A - Identification and sourcing: 1) What does a Poroporo plant, fruit and seed look like, and what do we need to know about it? 2) Why do we need to collect it from the Port Hills? 3) Where can we find a Poroporo plant on the Port Hills to collect from? 4) Why and how to do we ask for permission to collect? Quick answers identification and sourcing: 1) See the fact sheet attached. Poroporo is poisonous. How is this plant poisonous and how do we stay safe? 2) To maintain the local gene pool, all plants grown for use in reserves on the Port Hills are collected from the Port Hills. This also means that the Poroporo are best adapted to growing in the Port Hills conditions (temperature, soil condition, humidity, sunshine hours) as their ancestors have already been growing there for a long time. 3) There are laws and rules for reserves to protect the species in them, so it is always important to ask first before taking anything from a reserve. Park Rangers from the Christchurch City Council help look after public reserves, so ask them for permission. Permission to collect seed is usually only given to trained nursery people or 2
researchers. You are helping with a council research project, so you will be given permission once you have found a plant to collect from that is in the right place. 4) Find a Poroporo plant on the roadside or public reserve land. Once you ve found a plant to collect from, send a map and photo of the location to Eleanor, our project mentor. Her email address is bissell@actrix.co.nz. Eleanor will get permission from the Park Ranger and let you know if it is alright to collect. 3
B - Collecting: 1) Which fruits do we collect? 2) How many fruits do we collect? Quick answers collecting: 1) Collect the ripe, bright orange coloured fruit. The birds may have beaten you to it, pecked a hole and taken some seeds. You know these are ripe and ready to collect. Don't pick the green ones as they need more time on the tree to ripen. If some yellow non-ripe ones are collected and left inside in a sunny place, do they ripen and turn orange? 2) There are about 100 seeds per fruit! You will need the seeds of about 10 fruit per tray. Collect 20 fruit from 3 4 different plants (if you can), for your first 2 trays. Are there really that many seeds in each fruit? Does it change much? Step 2: how to sow Poroporo A - Cleaning: 4
1) How do we clean the seeds? 2) Why do we clean the seeds? Quick answers cleaning: 1) i) Soak the fruit in a bucket of water for a few days to soften. ii) In a medium gauge sieve, gently grind the fruit to a pulp using hands or a pestel, over a bowl. iii) Rinse water over ground fruit on sieve, and tip into a bowl, scrape seeds off sieve into bowl also, then pour into a bucket. iv) Place a course gauge sieve over the bowl and pour a bucket of water with pulp and seeds through the sieve into the bowl. 5
Tip: it is recommended to use a coarse mesh sieve like the one in the picture, to seperate the seeds from the fruit skins. The alternative is hand picking these skins out (more time consuming). times v) Repeat the above steps several until most pulp gone and seed clean. vi) Tip seed in water through fine gauge sieve, and rinse with hose water, tip back into bucket and repeat several times until seeds are clean. 2) Seeds are cleaned so the pulp doesn t rot the seed in the nursery trays. In the wild, the seeds are eaten by birds and cleaned by enzymes in the birds gut, so when the bird poops, the seed comes out clean and with nitrogen from the birds gut, ready to grow when it lands on soil and meets the right conditions. B - Sowing: 1) How do we sow the seeds? Will some seeds grow with pulp on? Will some seeds grow better after being soaked in vinegar? 2) How do we look after the seeds once sown? 3) How do we store the seeds? 6
Quick answers sowing: 1) i) Clean two seed trays with a lemon juice or janola solution to kill the bacteria on the tray. Does each solution work the same? - try both ii) Fill the 5cm deep seed tray to ¾ full with seed raising mix iii) Sprinkle a little seed raising mix into the bucket of seed to make spreading easier. you test What is seed viability and how would it? iv) Scatter the seed mix, evenly over top of seed raising mix in the tray. 7
v) Lightly cover seed mix with 4mm gravel (~2 cups) (or use seed raising mix if you don't have gravel) until 1cm depth. Label the seed tray with name (Common name = Poroporo); date collected, date sown, and location collected. 8
i) Place seed trays on warm blocks or black plastic for maximum ground warmth. Place under cover or in the porch or under trees in the school grounds where they will get the most sun all day and won t get knocked over. ii) Sprinkle to water with a watering can through a fine rose. Watering may need to be daily depending on the temperature and rainfall if they are outside. Hint: start pouring watering can over ground before watering the seed tray, so the seeds don t get drowned by a heavy down-pour. iii) Poroporo seeds and seedlings are frost tender, so it is best to keep them under cover of the shade-house, porch or trees in the school grounds until they are ready to plant out toward the end of spring. iv) Seeds will germinate in about 3 months, so you should see Poroporo seedlings emerging about the end of July. 3) To store seeds, once cleaned, dry on thick pad of newspaper. Once dry, scrape into a paper bag and store in a dry, cool cupboard. These should store for at least one year. Step 3: how to grow Poroporo A - Growing: 1) How long will the seedlings take to grow? How viable the stored seeds are after one, two and three years? 2) What do we do once they are too big for the seed tray? 9
3) How do we look after them in the pots? 4) When do they get planted on the Port Hills? Quick answers growing: 1) Once germinated around the end of July, the seedlings will grow to about 5 7cm tall in 3 6 months, so around end of September/October How soon do plants indoors reach 5cm compared with those grown outdoors? 2) When 5-7cm tall (no taller) the seedlings are ready to transplant into bigger bags. i). The individual seedlings are pricked out carefully and planted gently into plastic bags (PB3/4) or coffee cups. The prick out tool can be anything from a small stick to a fork, or the proper metal tool for this task your hands are quite useful too, to tease the delicate roots apart. Be careful not to break any roots. ii). Fill the coffee cup with potting mix first, pressing the soil into the cup. Then make a hole big enough for the seedling and place in seedling in there. Ensure the ends of the roots are facing towards the ground (bottom of coffee cup). Press firmly on the soil around the Poroporo to make sure the seedling is secure. Once planted, give the Poroporo a good 30 second water with a watering can. Hint: ensure the soil is really moist when separating out the seedlings as the roots will separate more easily. 3) As the seedlings are frost tender, it is best to still keep them under cover of a shade-house, porch or trees in the school grounds until they are ready to plant. Water the seedlings approximately once or twice a week the same way the seeds were watered. If your plants are outside if there has been rainfall, then count this as a watering. You may not need to water them very often. Hint: you can check the soil moisture by putting your finger part way in the soil, if it is moist, then you won t need to water. By watering different amounts to different groups plants, will one grow faster? 10
4) When the Poroporo reach about 40cm and the frosts have finished, they will be planted on the Port Hills. What happens once Poroporo are planted? Once the Poroporo are planted, we will continue investigating what conditions offer the best growing conditions. These are some of the environments we are interested in testing: a) Will Poroporo grow in dry summer conditions? b) Will it grow better in dry summer conditions if we provide: i) Shelter (from planted Ngaio)? ii) Water Crystals? c) Will it grow in deep burn soils? d) Will it grow in the open areas that are exposed to some wind? Poroporo usually appears in sheltered places e) How well does Poroporo do planted among bracken, cocksfoot, old gorse and broom bushes, and between planted native trees? 11
This is what could be seen under established Poroporo in the Port Hills in a few years - Poroporo sheltering a young native tree (Wineberry) from wind and too much sun so that it is healthy and can grow into a tall tree. 12