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You have joined us again at Lake Heron and we are surrounded by beauty here.
There are hills, mountains, glorious grasslands and Lorraine Cook who is a Flora Ranger for
She is going to tell us about some of the plants in Lake Heron and how they affect the
water quality.
We are standing here in front of this plant and its name is Carex Secter and this is a
really useful plant.
I think it is a really cool plant and it is one of the few plants around here that can
grow right out in the middle of the water.
This plant loves to get its feet wet and so do I!
This plant is a classic wetland plant; it has got qualities that are typical of lots
of other wetland plants.
It has this big root system that spreads out and, like other wetland plants, it soaks up
all the nutrients coming into the wetlands like a sponge.
So it filters what nutrients are going into the wetlands.
It also soaks up all the water during the wetter times and during the dryer times it
lets the water slowly out into the wetland and so it keeps it constantly wet.
And that water going out has a much higher quality than the water coming in because of
that purifying and sedimenting effect.
With this particular plant, with all those nutrients it is taking up, it is growing really
fast and really big. This plant can grow up to 100 years old.
It produces all these leaves that you can see and they hang down into the water.
When they finally drop off and rot, the nutrients in the leaves go back into the water and are
a food source for invertebrates.
The invertebrates are then a food source for the fish and the birds so it is a really important
part of the food chain.
So really, really well adapted – not only does it clean the water but it also provides
food for the species that live around the water.
These funny bits on the plant here are the seed heads. It produces tons of these every
year so that it can quickly spread out and colonise new areas.
There is certainly a lot of it around up here!