The relationship between grasses and humans is as old as time – a story of understanding land, food production, invasion and ecology.
Macedon Ranges council’s grass identification field day walk happening at Malmsbury Common will give residents the opportunity to better understand native and introduced grassland species in the region.
Council bushland reserves officer Martin Roberts will lead the walk on Sunday, December 11, giving practical, easy to understand demonstrations for identifying the grasses residents have on their properties and in paddocks.
“It’s important to know about the grasses where you are,” Mr Roberts said.
“If you look at it from a fire perspective, [native] kangaroo grass actively grows in summer and whilst everything can grow in a bad season, it doesn’t burn as hot as your introduced grasses.
“[Grasses] are really essential for providing a matrix of cover across the ground that provides habitat for small mammals and ground nesting birds, from an insect perspective as well.”
He said because of Malmsbury’s history as an old mining town, the landscape was highly disturbed and contained a weed of national significance – an exotic needle grass.
“I want to encourage people to have a curiosity about this, a curiosity about their local environment as well as the complex nature of our recent history in this space… what might be dominating and why,” Mr Roberts said.
“There’s a relationship between grass and people and it’s been going for millenia.”
The walk runs from 10am to 11.30am at Malmsbury Common.
Register: www.mrsc.vic.gov.au/See-Do/Events/Whats-on-around-the-shire/Grass-ID-Field-Day-Malmsbury.
Elsie Lange
