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THE SOUTH AUSTRALIAN NATURALIST 
July, 1952 
NATIVE PLANTS GROWING ALONGSIDE A 
RAILWAY LINE 
By KEN DUNSTONE. 
As naturalists, our main object is con- 
servation. Therefore, to all of us, it is a 
matter of great interest to know that even 
at the beginning of 1952, there are certain 
remnants, at least, of the flora which once 
covered the Adelaide plains. 
In the course of nine months’ travel on 
the Port line, between Adelaide and Alber- 
ton, I have noted 14 native plants. All 
were seen from railway carriages, so that 
there are possibly more lingering on, 
especially those of lowly nature or short 
life. 
Just in passing, it is worth while men- 
tioning that some of the best places for 
original vegetation are along railway lines, 
mainly because of the protection from 
grazing. 
It is interesting that all of the following 
plants are of a perennial nature. 
The grass, Enneapogon nigricans, with 
the vernacular name of “black-heads,” 
occurs in a few isolated clumps near the 
Kilkenny and Cheltenham stations. This 
is one of the very few areas, to my know- 
ledge, where this survives. It must have 
occurred all over the Adelaide plain at one 
time. 
A yellow-flowered Senecio is found as 
flourishing groups at Woodville and is likely 
to hold out there for some time yet. 
Two other native grasses are very com- 
mon along the line. They are a wallaby- 
grass (Danthonia) and a spear-grass ( Stipa 
scabra). 
The pretty little pink-flowered Convol- 
vulus (C. enibescens) climbs among the 
weeds and is very common. 
Several sedges are seen. A Carex is grow- 
ing well in many places. Scirpus nodosns 
and Cyperns gymnocaulos are both seen 
near Alberton. 
A salt-bush ( Kochia ) is numerous as one 
nears Cheltenham. 
The bulrush ( Typha angusti folia-) grows 
in an artificial drain. 
The little native soursob ( Oxalis corni- 
culata) is very common, and the lily 
(Dianella revolnta) grows in occasional 
dense clumps. 
There are some very good patches of our 
common bluebell ( Wahlenbergia ) right 
alongside Holden’s factory, and finally, the 
little prostrate summer-flowering Boer- 
havia diffusa covers many square feet with 
its long runners in many places. The abo- 
rigines used to eat the thick rootstock of 
this plant, which is in the same family as 
the showy Bougainvillea, though one 
would not suspect it superficially. 
The fact that the above plants mostly 
have thick underground rootstock and that 
they are in fenced-olf areas helps to account 
for their survival. 
It will be interesting to see how many of 
them are left in another twenty or thirty 
years’ time. 
In the South Australian Naturalist cf 
February, 1924, Mr. E. H. lsing describes a 
list of 17 native plants which he observed 
growing in the limited area of the railway 
reserve at Mile End. Many of these are 
not in my list, so I think that they have 
died out during the last 25 years. 
At this stage note should be made 
of a raspwort ( Halorrhagis sp.) which sur- 
vives still in a few densely populated sub- 
urbs, such as Millswood, where its shoots 
appear on a footpath year after year. 
Then the Teucriurn racemosum , which 
is common along the Murray, occasionally 
is seen in the most unlikely places. 
I discovered it beside the South Road, 
near Darlington, where it was surrounded 
by introduced grasses. I consider its life 
here will be very short, although I hope 
not. 
There is a flourishing colony of a native 
peaflower ( Psoralea patens) along the rail- 
way line just over Marion Road. In com- 
mon with many others of the Leguminosae, 
an occasional fire seems to assist its survival 
by helping to germinate the seeds. Along 
the line a little way from it is a fine group 
of the golden wattle (. Acacia pycnantha ), 
and along the Marion Road at Ascot Park 
I have seen several healthy shrubs of the 
Acacia victoriae, with its heavily scented 
flowers. In a paddock not far distant I was 
amazed to find the Marsilea brownii. This 
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