Cytisus proliferus facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Cytisus proliferus |
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Cytisus proliferus, also known as tagasaste or tree lucerne, is a small evergreen tree. It usually grows about 3 to 4 meters (10 to 13 feet) tall. This tree is well-known for helping to make soil healthier, acting like a natural fertilizer. It belongs to the Fabaceae family, which is also called the pea family.
Tagasaste originally comes from the dry, volcanic hills of the Canary Islands. However, it is now grown in many other parts of the world, like Australia and New Zealand. Farmers often grow it as a special crop to feed their animals.
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About Tagasaste
Tagasaste is an evergreen shrub, meaning it stays green all year. It has rough, yellowish-grey bark. Its younger branches are soft and hairy. The leaves are made up of three equal-sized, greyish-green leaflets, which are a bit lighter underneath.
Its creamy-white flowers smell nice and grow in small groups where the leaves meet the stem. The seed pods are flat and look like peas. They start green and turn black when they are ready. The seeds inside are tiny, shiny, and black.
Tagasaste is a special type of plant called a legume. Legumes can work with tiny soil bacteria called rhizobia. These bacteria help the plant take nitrogen from the air and turn it into a form the plant can use. This process is called nitrogen fixation, and it helps make the soil richer.
Where Tagasaste Grows Best
Tagasaste likes sandy, well-drained soils. It can grow in soils with a pH range of 4 to 7. Its roots can grow very deep, sometimes down to 10 meters (33 feet) or more, especially in deep, loose soils. If anything stops the roots from growing deep, the plant might not grow as well or live as long.
Some types of tagasaste are sensitive to root rot fungus if the soil stays too wet. This fungus can be caused by things like Fusarium, Pythium, and Rhizoctonia.
Tagasaste can handle cold winter temperatures down to about -9°C (16°F). Some types can even survive temperatures as low as -15°C (5°F). However, frost can damage the leaves, and young plants can die if temperatures drop below 0°C (32°F). When winter temperatures are below 20°C (68°F), mature trees grow more slowly.
This plant can also handle hot weather, up to 50°C (122°F). But if it gets hotter than 36°C (97°F), the leaves might close up due to stress. Tagasaste usually flowers during the early rainy season. In places like Australia, New Zealand, and East Africa, this is typically from June to October.
Tagasaste Roots
Tagasaste has two main types of roots:
- Sinker roots: These are a few large roots that can go very deep, often more than 10 meters (33 feet). They help the plant find water deep underground during long, dry summers.
- Feeder roots: There are many of these roots, and they mostly stay in the top 1.5 meters (5 feet) of the soil. They can spread out at least 15 meters (49 feet) from the tree trunk. These roots take in minerals from the soil and also water in winter.
In summer, tagasaste can do something amazing called 'hydraulic lift'. Water taken up by the deep sinker roots can be moved up to the shallow feeder roots. Then, the plant can release this water into the surrounding soil. This helps the plant keep getting nutrients from the topsoil, even when it's very dry. Other native plants, like banksia shrubs, also use this trick.
Scientists have also found that if tagasaste is planted in rows that run north to south, both the shoots (branches) and roots grow twice as fast on the west side of the plant compared to the east side.
Tagasaste as Animal Feed
Tagasaste is a valuable food source for animals like cows and sheep. Animals like to eat it, and it has a lot of protein. Farmers can let animals graze directly on the plants, or they can cut the tagasaste and feed it fresh or dried.
As animal feed, tagasaste usually has between 23% and 27% crude protein. It also contains 18% to 24% crude indigestible fiber. Even when grown in poor soils, tagasaste can keep these high nutrient levels if it gets the right fertilizers.
Phosphorus is very important for both the tagasaste plant and the animals eating it. Animals need even more phosphorus for their best growth than the plants do. Fertilizers also help reduce certain compounds called phenolics in the plant. These phenolics are similar to tannins and can make tagasaste less tasty for animals, causing them to eat less. They also make it harder for animals to use the protein in the plant. Even though tagasaste always has more than 14% protein, giving animals extra protein, like from lupin seeds, can help them eat more tagasaste when the phenolic levels are high.
Tagasaste usually has the same good nutritional value as the best types of alfalfa, especially when grown in good soil with balanced nutrients. Animals like steers (young male cattle) can gain 1 to 1.5 kilograms (2.2 to 3.3 pounds) per day during the growing season. Farmers can graze their animals on tagasaste 6 to 10 times a year, usually every 6 to 8 weeks.
Managing Tagasaste for Grazing
When tagasaste flowers, its taste changes. In Western Australia, it starts flowering in winter (around June). The seeds are ready and fall off in early summer (first warm day in December). After flowering, the leaves become less tasty, but the bark becomes more appealing to animals. This can lead to animals stripping the bark off the tree trunks. Also, the plant's growth slows down, and it might lose its leaves.
Farmers manage tagasaste grazing to prevent it from flowering and keep it in its young, leafy state. Studies have shown that if tagasaste is heavily grazed or cut by machines in the first six months of the year, it won't flower later in the year.
Originally, tagasaste was used to feed sheep in Western Australia during autumn when other food was scarce. Farmers would let the tagasaste grow for 11 months, then graze 100 sheep per hectare for a month. Since the tagasaste would grow to about 3 meters (10 feet) tall, it had to be cut by machines while the sheep were in the field. Sheep cannot be left on tagasaste all the time because they can eat every leaf, which can kill the plants.
A big improvement happened when farmers discovered that cattle could be left to graze on tagasaste all the time. Cattle tongues are too big to pick off all the new shoot buds, so some leaves always remain on the plant. Sheep, however, can remove every leaf and new bud, which can kill the plants. Today, most tagasaste is used for cattle grazing, and the plantations can be grazed any time of year. Even though tagasaste can grow up to 5 meters (16 feet) tall, farmers keep it under 2 meters (6.5 feet) for grazing.
On the poor sandy soils in Western Australia, tagasaste has greatly increased the number of animals a farm can support. It has boosted the carrying capacity from 1 or 2 dry sheep equivalents per hectare to 8-10 dry sheep equivalents (about 1 cow) per hectare. This is roughly a ten-fold increase!
Tagasaste also helps prevent wind erosion and too much groundwater recharge, which were big environmental problems before. Recently, it was found that tagasaste can help store carbon from the atmosphere, a process called Carbon sequestration. It can store about 6 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per hectare each year. About half of this carbon is stored in the soil, and the other half is in the wood of the branches, trunk, and roots. Generally, tagasaste produces about 1 tonne of edible material for every 100 mm (4 inches) of rain it receives per hectare each year.
Tagasaste Around the World
Australia
The idea of using tagasaste as animal feed was first noticed in the 1870s by Dr. Perez, a doctor on La Palma island in the Canary Islands, and by Spanish cattle farmers. He tried to get Spanish authorities interested, but they weren't. So, he sent seeds to Kew Gardens in England. Kew Gardens tested tagasaste and then sent seeds to all their colonies around the world. In Australia, several people promoted tagasaste over the next century, but it wasn't widely used until the 1980s in Western Australia.
The first 2 hectares (5 acres) of tagasaste in the West Midlands of Australia were planted by John Cook on his farm near Dandaragan in 1982. His success excited local farmers and researchers. Before this, farming in the region relied only on annual pastures and crops. The area has mostly winter rainfall, with up to eight months without rain in some summers. Before tagasaste, people thought it was impossible to grow plants that lasted all year in this region.
In 1984, the Martindale Research Project started, funded by a large grant from Sir James McCusker. This project involved local farmers and the Western Australia Department of Agriculture in research and development. Farmers like John Cook and Bob Wilson developed special equipment to plant and cut tagasaste cheaply on large farms. The Martindale Project solved many problems related to growing tagasaste, feeding animals, and the costs involved. This gave farmers a reliable way to use tagasaste with confidence. The Western Australia Department of Agriculture also did trials on their research station and at Bob Wilson's farm. Local farmers and researchers formed a group that later became the Evergreen Group, which looked into other useful shrubs, grasses, and legumes.
Today, there are about 100,000 hectares (247,000 acres) of tagasaste in Western Australia. Most of it grows on deep, poor sands near the coast, where rainfall is between 350 and 600 mm (14 to 24 inches). Most of the tagasaste in Western Australia is in the West Midlands sand plain, north of Perth.
New Zealand
Tagasaste was recognized as a useful animal feed in New Zealand as early as 1897 in the Taranaki Region. Even today, it is still recommended as a fodder crop in some parts of the country. However, it has also started to become an invasive species, meaning it spreads easily and can harm native plants. The New Zealand Department of Conservation, which protects public conservation land, considers tagasaste an "environmental weed."
Different Types of Tagasaste
In Australia, a type of tagasaste that grows low to the ground, called Weeping Tagasaste, has been developed. The hope is that this plant won't need to be cut or trimmed by machines. It's still early to tell if Weeping Tagasaste will produce as much food as regular tagasaste. Early signs suggest it might produce less and be more likely to get soil diseases.
In South Africa, three special types of tagasaste have been developed and given names:
- "Green Kalahari" for dry areas (300–500 mm or 12-20 inches of rain).
- "Cattle Candy" for areas with moderate temperatures (600–800 mm or 24-31 inches of rain).
- "Kilimanjaro" for tropical highland areas (800–3500 mm or 31-138 inches of rain).
Farmers are working to create even better types of tree lucerne that are tougher, resist diseases, and can grow in more places. One interesting use is in silvopasture agroforestry. This is where trees like tagasaste are grown alongside other crops or trees, using the same land for more than one purpose. Sheep can then be used to control weeds and keep the tree lucerne from shading out the main crop. The tagasaste also helps fertilize the soil naturally, making it better over time and increasing overall production.
See also
In Spanish: Tagasaste o escobón para niños
