Murnong – Yummy Yam-daisy
Foothill Yam-daisy flowers. Microseris lanceolata. Bushtucker - Murnong.
We harvested and ate our first round of Foothill Yam-daisy – Microseris lanceolata in early February. Foothill Yam-daisy, known as Murnong in local aboriginal (Wurundjeri) language. This species once covered most of Victoria & was a staple food supply of aboriginals over the state. It would have been beautiful to see the land covered in these beautiful plants with pretty yellow flowers over many months.
Foothill Yam-daisy root and plant. Microseris lanceolata. Bushtucker - Murnong.
Foothill Yam-daisy – Microseris lanceolata has dissapeared from large areas of Victoria mostly through grazing which was introduced when white settlement occurred through the 1800′s. Cattle and sheep either ate the plants or trampled the ground so that the ground hardened and became unsuitable for the tuberous roots of Foothill Yam-daisies.
We used a small shovel and dug out the whole plant, the underground tuberous root is the eating part. Mostly the Murnong had finished flowering so we just spread the seeds in the garden bed area for the next seasons bushtucker plants for us to eat. We simply washed the tuberous roots and decided to put them on the BBQ as that was what we were doing for dinner. They had a nice texture and were quite tasty as they were cooked alongside some meat and onions.
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I am very interested in planting some murnong. Can I ask where you got your plants from?
Cheers
Max
Plants were from my local council and they source from a range of local indigenous nursery suppliers, not sure which one they got these specific plants off but you could contact the nurseries direct to ask.
Link to the list of indgenous nurseries my council use is attached:
http://www.yarraranges.vic.gov.au/files/0ceb8a67-e624-4e9c-92d7-9d0c011bf5ed/Indigenous%20plant%20nursery.pdf
Also try your own local council or indigenous nurseries in your own area if this doesn’t work.
Let us know how you go.
Thanks. I’m in Caulfield so I’ve been looking a little closer to home. Since contacting you, I have found some Microseris lanceolata (the Alpine murnong) at VINC in Fairfield, and also some Microseris scapigera (the plains myrnong, which would have been more common in the coastal country where I live) at SKINC. I’m going to plant both in my very sandy garden soil and see how they go.
http://www.vinc.net.au/catalogue/catalogue.htm
http://www.skinc.com.au/species.php
re: lanceolata and scapigera … or is it the other way round (ie, the former is the plains murnong and the latter the alpine version) – or are they the same thing?
Hi Max,
As far as I can tell there are 3 entities (species) but they have not formally been delineated yet from the original thought that there was 1 species of Yam Daisy in Australia. The names M.lanceolata and M.scapigera was a re-name of the same species when it was thought to be a single species. I think in the future the naming will become clearer, there will probably be 3 species; alpine, foothills and basalt plains. The 3 probably are all quite different in form as the habitat variations in these 3 environments are great.
At the moment they tend to be called by either of the species names M.lanceolata or M.scapigera and then classified as to the environment they were sourced from hence “Foothill Yam-daisy” from this post. I think the “Foothill” terminology comes from the DSE Ecological Vegetation Classes (EVC’s) system where all parts of Victoria are classified into different vegetation types. For more information on EVC’s:
http://www.dse.vic.gov.au/DSE/nrenlwm.nsf/LinkView/2A419C0C347D318ECA2571AB001C73E17336D667D8B8D56ECA25713200096385
Hi, max. I live in Bendigo, and to the south of this town, (as far as I know), there are some small crops of naturally ocurring mirnong. I came across your post while searching for some more info on this plant. You see the local DSE is doing a controlled burn where a large proportion of these mirnong are and I’m not sure of the effect this will have on this years crop. (I’ve got a GOOD idea though!). Another interesting thing I beleive about this plant is that it’s survival here, I beleive, is due to the local wallaby and kangaroo population digging them for food! As the soil is so compacted, (all old gold diggings abound), Idon’t beleive the mirnong would have survived without this “cultivation”. By the way, how did you go with your ‘crop”?
Hi there.
Just to let you know that our murnong went really well after the bushfire. They all regenerated plus more (although this was near to our house which didn’t burn so the burn level was not too extreme). I totally agree with you that the wallabies and kangaroos are probably helping to keep this species growing by digging it up and loosening the soil. An important job for this species as they don’t like compacted soil. In the past not only wildife but the indigenous peoples (aboriginals) would have readily undertaken the digging and kept the soil light and well managed for a major food source like the murnong to survive.
I hope the naturally occuring population of murnong are not negatively effected by the prescribed burn as this would be a real shame – not much of that murnong left occurring naturally like that.
Regards,
Bush Chick.