Xanthorrhoea plants are also known as Balga Grass Plants. 'Balga' is the Aboriginal word for black boy and for many years the plant was fondly known as a “Black Boy”.
COMMON NAME: GRASS TREE, BLACK BOY, XANTHORRHOEA JOHNSONII
The Grass Tree makes for an ideal feature tree for native gardens, shrubberies or simply grown in decorative pots. Must be planted in a well-drained soil under full sun.
Connection to Australia's history
The Aboriginal name for grass tree is 'balga' or black boy, referring to the blackened trunk of the plant that remains after a fire sweeps a region.
Common names for Xanthorrhoea include grasstree, grass gum-tree (for its resin-yielding species), kangaroo tail and blackboy.
blackboy. / (ˈblækˌbɔɪ) / noun. another name for grass tree (def.
BALGA. "Balga" is an Aboriginal word for the grass tree Xanthorrhoea commonly known as "black boy" trees. The name was chosen in 1954 for a portion of what was then known as the "Mirrabooka Project Area".
In the Noongar language Gabbee means water, and Kalga (commonly spelt Balga) means grass tree.
Grass trees are also known as 'yacca', which is likely derived from a South Australian Aboriginal language, mostly likely Kaurna.
Grass trees (also known as blackboys) are indigenous to Australia. They are slow growing but very long lived plants that develop a thick trunk formed by a mass of old leaf bases held together by natural resins. It takes 30 or more years for the leaf tufts to rise above the trunk.
Should I cut off my flower spike? Sending up a flower spike is an energy sapping process for the tree and so it is often considered that removing the flower spike early will limit the amount of energy used to produce the spike and increase the likelihood of consistent growth of the roots and leaves instead.
Pubs across England called The Black Boy are generally named after King Charles II. It was a nickname coined by his mother because of the darkness of his skin and eyes. King Charles is credited with popularising champagne drinking and yachting in England.
A stand of Grass Trees approximately 200-300 years old. The best known common name for the Xanthorrhoea is blackboy. This name refers to the purported similarity in appearance of the trunked species to an Aboriginal boy holding an upright spear.
Grass trees are very much part of the Australian landscape and uniquely Australian. They fascinated the first European settlers, since they were unlike any other known plant. In fact, they are a living fossil developed early in the evolutionary stakes for flowering plants.
Take a cup of brown sugar, put it in a bucket of water and water your grass trees once a month for two years with that mixture. The sugar feeds the mycorrhiza and gets it going and your grass tree will survive.
australis takes several years to flower, and it does not always flower annually, but in the season after a bushfire it flowers prolifically. The flowers appear on a spear-like spike which can grow up to 2 metres (6.6 ft) tall.
Dig around the base of the plant severing the old roots. You only need to dig a few centimetres away from the trunk to avoid damaging it. Do not push on the top of the plant as you may snap it off. Wrap the root system in damp hessian or canvas to stop it from drying out while transporting the plant.
Give Your Grass Tree Enough Water, But Not Too Much
Once or twice a week is usually enough during dry spells in the summer, but make sure that you keep the actual trunk of your grass tree as dry as possible – too much water on the trunk will soften it, leaving it vulnerable to pests and diseases.
Murnong or Yam- daisy (Microseris lanceolata ) was plentiful, favourite food. The fruits of some plants were eaten including the Native Cherry (Exocarpus cupressiformis), Geebung (Persoonia pinifolia), Wild Raspberry (Billardiera scandens) and Alpine Pepper (Drimys xerophilia).
Culturally significant trees provide valuable clues about where and how Aboriginal people used to live and the use of perishable materials. Aboriginal people caused scars on trees by removing bark for various purposes. The scars, which vary in size, expose the sapwood on the trunk or branch of a tree.
In Wiradjuri Country, carved trees marked ceremonial grounds and burials. Burial trees were decorated with distinct diamond and scroll motifs, unique and powerful, and faced those buried. Economically, trees provided generations of Indigenous people with shelter, fibre, tools, food and material for canoe-making.
Waratah is the Aboriginal word for 'Beautiful' -how they got this name is no surprise.
"Bindi Bindi means Butterfly in the local Noongar language."
Wanna is a Wirangu word for Sea, and Munda means Earth. The wisdom of Wanna Munda is shared in local schools by Aboriginal artist and author Susan Betts.
Watson identifies that the suffix -pilly / pilli refers to 'a gully', hence we have Indooroopilly = 'gully of the leeches'; Yerongpilly = 'sandy or gravelly gully'; Mutdapilly = 'sticky/muddy gully'; and Jeebropilly = 'gully of the sugar glider'.
The English equivalent for 'budji' is,"'to fart". If you've heard this word before but never knew what the Murri mob were talking about, well, chances were they were probably talking about you.