Spiky blue devils and chocolate lilies: Victorian grassland bursts with wildflowers after ecological ‘reset’

Thousands of native daisies, aromatic lilies, milkmaids, billy buttons and rare orchids have blossomed in a pocket of north-east Victorian grassland in one of the best wildflower displays in years.

Glen Johnson, an ecologist at Wild Research, said Boorhaman reserve, located north of Wangaratta, was “an amazingly diverse environment from the knees down”.

“Thousands upon thousands” of native wildflowers and herbs in purples, pinks, yellows and blues appeared between tussocks of native grasses at the site, in a burst of springtime colour that was rare to see, he said.

Some 70 native plant species could be found within the site, including spiky blue devils, purple-petalled broughton peas and four endangered species of orchid.

Boorhaman was one of the best reserves for purple diuris, a native orchid with mauve petals, Johnson said. It was also home to an unnamed, but intensely cocoa-scented, chocolate lily, which he called “the quintessential Cadburys of the chocolate lily world”.

The floral abundance on show this year is no accident, according to Victoria’s environment department. Careful management, including an ecological burn in May and weed control measures to reduce pasture grasses, laid the groundwork for wildflowers to thrive.

Dan Pendavingh, a senior natural environment program officer with the department, said ecological burning and weed control had “reset” the grassland system by providing space, moisture and nutrients for the native seedbank in the soil to flourish.

Those practices and above-average rainfall had contributed to the “exceptional wildflower germination” this year, he said.

Botanist and ecologist Paul Foreman said Boorhaman reserve was a “blaze of colour”.

Foreman, director of Blue Devil Consulting and an expert in grasslands of south-eastern Australia, said the “postage stamp” site was precious, offering a window into the past, before European settlement, when grasslands covered extensive parts of the state.

Today, only 0.25% of the northern plains grassland community remains, according to Victoria’s environment department, mostly as fragments on roadsides, rail reserves and on small sections of public and private land. Foreman said most of these were overlooked, under-appreciated and not actively managed.

But Boorhaman reserve was an exception, he said, retaining much of its pre-European biodiversity “by pure luck and a fluke”.

The railway reserve – alongside the historic Boorhaman railway line used for transporting grain – was never ploughed or cropped, but had been burned for fire protection on a regular basis.

Foreman said resources and support for Aboriginal organisations to revive cultural burning practices to support grasslands would be a triple win – for Indigenous people; for farmers because it would reduce fire risk; and for biodiversity because it would help encourage and restore threatened species in communities.

Dr Adrian Marshall, a grassy plains network facilitator with the Victorian National Parks Association, said grasslands were deteriorating, according to Victoria’s state of the environment report.

“We’ve lost a whole lot of grasslands, what we’ve got left is really endangered, and they’re home to a whole lot of endangered creatures,” he said, including birds, legless lizards, snakes, frogs, insects, and small marsupials.

Good quality grasslands such as Boorhaman reserve were like gold, he said.

Pendavingh said the current successes at the site would not have been possible without previous management and expertise spanning decades.

“We continue to build on the legacy of that long-term effort and hope to continue to preserve the unique floristic values of Boorhaman for generations to come.”