Albany Branch
The Albany Branch is a small and dedicated group that run a number of activities. A Wildflower Show is organized every September, as are regular excursions and meetings with guest speakers. The Branch plays a large role in coordinating the Albany Herbarium. The Group is passionate about conservation issues in the area.
The Branch meetings are now held at the DBCA conference room, 120 Albany Hwy, Albany on the 3rd Tuesday of each month at 7.30pm.(except January & September). The AGM is held at the February meeting. There is usually a Walk on the following Saturday, members meet to car-pool at a relevant spot in Albany at 9am to travel to a local Reserve or National Park.
President : Heather Anderson 0429 200 789
Secretary : Wendy Minchin 9845 1220
Email: albanyherb@outlook.com
Albany Herbarium
The Albany Herbarium is located at the rear of DBCA, entry is the corner of Moir & Hymus Streets, (Black gate). If you want to access the Herbarium to use the resources or to volunteer it is best to contact the Co-ordinators first.
The Herbarium is open Tuesday & Wednesday from 9am to 12noon.
Co-ordinator : Wendy Minchin 9845 1220.
Email : albanyherb@outlook.com (checked Tuesdays & Wednesdays)
Address : Albany Herbarium, c/o DBCA 120 Albany Hwy Albany 6330
The Albany Wildflower Show
The Wildflower Show is a great exhibition which features over 500 local & named Wildflower specimens.
It is held at the St John’s Hall, York St, Albany. This year the dates are Wed 21nd to Sat 24th September 2022.
Opening hours are from 9am to 4pm, Wed -Fri, 9am t0 1pm Sat. Admission is Adults $5 and children are free.
The St John Ladies provide light lunches & Devonshire teas.
Speaker’s and Walk’s for 2023
Commencing at 7.30pm the DBCA conference room at 122 Albany Hwy
March 21st:
Speaker – John Colwill,
WA has hundreds of native annuals, many of which create massive colourful landscapes in good years.Only about 6 of these are freely available but lots more should be. There are annuals suitable for creating broad swathes of colour or for growing in pots or hanging baskets. Our native annuals are under threat in the wild from development, weeds and, more lately, climate change. About one species in 6 in the Asteraceae (Daisy) family is Priority rated in Florabase. One is considered extinct. One is known from only 3 wild populations, all on farmland. Fortunately the future of that species is assured through widespread cultivation. He has extensive experience in the media with the ABC TV and radio and with community education through the Water Corp, Dept of Agriculture and Beyond Gardens extensive programme of free seminars throughout WA, including Albany. In the dim distant past he was also a lecturer at the Albany Summer Schools.He has a long history with the Wildflower Society at one stage holding the office of National President of SGAP. Also John has been finding, photographing and cultivating native annuals for the past forty years or more but still has a list of plants he would like to find!
There will be Scatter Packs for sale on the night. On line they are $40 each but for the night they will be $30 each or $100 for 4. However, with no EFTPOS facilities, it will have to be cash only.
Walk Saturday March 25th; Will be at Lake Seppings. Meeting at the carpark on Golf Links Rd to leave at 9am. BYO morning tea, appropriate clothing, water, chair, sunscreen etc.
February 21st:
Speaker – Lynda Strahan, Images from Lynda’s Wanderings of the Outback.
Walk Saturday February 25th; Meeting at Little Grove Store, 9am. Walk around Sharp Point & Cable Beach.
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Speaker’s & Walk’s for 2022
October 18th:
Dr. Neville Marchant AM will speak about King George Sound: the shop window of the remarkable south west flora
The coasts of the south west, have a fascinating botanical history. The region of present-day Albany gave safe anchorage in a strange land for a series of early natural history investigations. English and French botanists gained a glimpse of a remarkable flora that had evolved in relative isolation, over tens of millions of years, after the break-up of Gondwana. The plant specimens they collected are now preserved in various, mostly European, herbaria. They were studied by eminent taxonomists
who named new genera and new species, providing a classification framework for many later botanists who had access to the species-rich hotspots away from the coasts.
The PowerPoint presentation will summarize the remarkable array of flower structures and survival strategies that makes or flora so different from others, and how knowledge gradually expanded from 1791 by the efforts of visiting, and then by resident botanists like James Drummond and Charles Gardner.
July19th:
Review of the Talks & Walks from the June Meeting.
Walk Saturday 23rd; meet at Bakers Junction at 9am then proceed 2km north along Chester Pass Rd
June 26th:
9am at King River Hall, Millbrook Rd Albany Theme: Understanding for preservation
Speakers; Justin Jonson: Large Scale Restoration of Plant Communities in SW AUS Floristic Region: Successes and Challenges
Dr Joanna Young , Botanist and local conservationist : Prescribed burning: impacts on fire sensitive species within the Walpole Wilderness
Liz Edmunds – : Peat, fossils, palaeohistory + art
Walks; a) With Professor Stephen Hopper : Cultural heritage and life on Granite Stony Hill
b) with Heather Anderson : Gull Rock National Park
April 19th:
The 1st Speaker will be Dr Mary Gee, who will talk about her work involving rocks & plants. Then Don Titterton will also speak briefly and answer questions about being a DBCA campground host.
Walk Saturday April 23rd – Members & Visitors are Welcome to join us on our walk at Gull Rock NP (west side).
Meet at the Lower King Shop, 629 Lower King Rd Albany, at 9am to sign in and car pool etc. Wear sensible bush walk gear, cameras, water etc, bring your morning tea & chair. Should take about 2-3 hrs, it could be windy & a little damp.
March 15:
Speaker – Dr Paul Armstrong (botanist) and Gillian Determis (orchid enthusiast) will talk about Brookfield farm in Marbelup(18km west of Albany). Gillian will discus the history of the farm, where she grew up, and her mother Annie still lives. Paul will showcase photos of some of the 280 species of native flora we have recorded in the remnant vegetation on the farm over the last 16 months.
Walk – Saturday March 19th; Billa Boya reserve, meet at King River Tavern, corner of Chester Pass rd & Millbrook Rd 9am.
February 15:
Speaker – Stewart Ford will talk about Western Ground Parrots, what we know of their diet and how botany was used in the selection of release site for the first wild to wild translocation of WGP.
Walk Saturday February 19th; Meeting at Little Grove Store, 9am. Peter Stewart took us to Esplanade Harbour reserve, the foreshore near Shoal Bay retreat and then the lookout at Jimmy Newells Harbour. He was teaching us the difference between peduncles, petioles and pedicels. He had example sheets of Bullich, marri, karri and jarrah, with identifying features of all of them.
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Speaker’s for 2021
March 16: Ruth Haight; Fauna need Flora, An ex vet nurse/wildlife carer, Ruth has stories and information about how to live with our native fauna, and will focus on plant relationships.
April 20: Dr Gillian Craig; The Impact of Fire in the Fitzgerald, This comes out of a project Ravensthorpe are doing to monitor fire effects from photos.
Sylvia leighton, Jane Thompson and Delys Harland; A report on a Mary Bremner grant project helping children to get to know wildflowers in their local school bush patches.
May 25: Basil Shur; Gondwana link eco-restoration: the flora with a look particularly at the new property, Tootanellup, near Frankland.
June 15: Nathan McQuoid; Eucalpyts
August 17: Mark Brundrett; He is an Adjunct Associate Professor at UWA and a Research Associate of the West Australian Herbarium. Recent research has focused on orchid pollination and conservation, restoration of ecosystems and the impacts of fire and weeds on Perth’s urban bushland. He also studies the evolution of plant nutrition traits, biodiversity patterns in Australia and globally and orchid taxonomy and has published a field guide to local orchids, Southwest Identification & Ecology of Australian Orchids
September 22 – 25: Albany Wildflower Show; St John’s Church, York St Albany
October 19: Loxley Fedec; Beetles, bugs & all things Insects. The talk will be about how mapping our biodiversity, using iNaturalist is so important in building our biodiversity understanding. Loxley also likes to promote the Work that the South Coast Threatened Invertebrates Recovery Team do – She is also on that committee – and relate invertebrates back to insect/plant relationships and and why monitoring distribution ranges are relevant.
November 16: Katie Symes & Prue Anderson; WA Fungi
Walk’s for 2021
These are the planned walk’s, they can change closer to the date usually because of the weather. Updates will be available on the WSWA facebook page.
Feb 20: Lake Vancouver, Goode Beach, Albany
March 20: Lake Seppings, Middleton Beach, Albany
April 24: South Stirlings, Manypeaks
May 22: Banksia Farm, Mt Barker
June 27: A Fungi Walk, Denmark
July 24: the City of Albany Reserve
August 21: Orchid walk, Various places around Albany.
September: Wildflower Show 22 – 25th October St John’s Hall Albany
October 23: Twin Creek Reserve, Knight rd Porongurup.