With Spencer Shaw
Bleeding Heart Homalanthus populifolius
Sometimes a plant can be so common in your field of view that it’s easy to miss its significance and importance to ecosystems, it can so much a part of the landscape and so self sustaining that it can be forgotten in favour of all the rare and threatened plants and those things that are hard to grow, and so it is with your common run of the mill Homalanthus populifolius!
Homalanthus populifolius syn: Homalanthus nutans, Omalanthus populifolius has had a few name changes over the last few decades (just to keep us on our toes) and is a member of the Euphorbiaceae family, a very large Family of plants spread across the globe. It is dioecious – separate male and female plants.
This species is one of those ridiculously fast growing plants that kicks starts ecosystem change by colonising open ground, wether that be an opening in the forest, along roadsides, disturbed edges (and at our place just about anywhere and everywhere). Favoured germination conditions are open ground with high light levels and reasonable moisture holding capacity in the soil. From seedling to mature and fruiting could be as little as 18-24 months. In open conditions they become a small tree up to 5-7 metres, but I have seen a few spectacular specimens topping 10 metres in lowland rainforest.
As for kick starting ecosystem change, within 24 months you can have a deep leaf litter providing shelter and habitat for macro invertebrates and all those critters that eat them; they are a tree that is often as wide as tall, providing shade and humidity for secondary rainforest plants to recruit; the fruit of Homalanthus populifolius is highly sort after by birds (particularly the Brown Cuckoo Dove Macropygia amboinensis on our property), who readily spread seed.
I love Homalanthus, it’s hard to imagine a rainforest planting being successful without them. They are our ultimate rainforest pioneer species and well worth planting – that is if they aren’t popping up by themselves!
There are lots of seedlings at the moment. How densely would you plant them in new ground?
Hi Frances, Yes they are popping up very well at the moment. To plant those seedlings out consider the size of the parent plant. It would be good to give them at least 6 m between plants. Make sure you water the transplanted seedlings well and regularly while their roots settle and perhaps reduce some of the bigger leaves. Karen
Only just seen your reply! I suppose they are planted about that far apart, but lots of other things in between. They are very varied in their growth. Macarangas are doing equally well or better, and native mulberries too. Between them i hope they will soon give other plants meaningful shade 🙂 Better to have too many and thin them if required, I feel, and “too many” also allows for failures!
We put in two of these in our yard in late autumn 2019. With fairly minimal care – the occasional bucket of water – they survived the awful summer of 2019-2020, and are doing okay right now (they greatly appreciated the good rain of February 2020, and then again good rain at end-October). So I am aiming for a ‘miyawaki forest’ on my block in Geebung on the northside; I am going to pack in the plants like a rainforest (mostly dry rainforest/ scrub type).. to make up for at least some of the suburban habitat – for frogs, tree-snakes, possums, etc – that has been annihilated around us. I will have given some wildlife a refuge, for a while.
Our Homalanthus has been in for just under two years and has grown rapidly to just over 3 metres. This year it is covered with what appear to be rust spots on all mature leaves. I’m not sure as to whether it is spreading to the new leaves.