The common shrub your nose knows best - Tree violet, Melicytus dentatus

If you’ve had the chance for a wander along the Merri lately, you may have noticed an intoxicating perfume filling the air… While the silver wattles and their other Acacia cousins send us a clear visual message of changing seasons, few plants along the Merri can compete with the humble tree violet for capturing our olfactory attention!

A tree violet on Edgars Creek, positively dripping with flowers.

For most of the year, tree violets (Melicytus dentatus) take an unassuming place in the understorey. When not in flower they could easily be mistaken for other indigenous shrubs, such as sweet bursaria (Bursaria spinosa), or sticky hop bush (Dodonaea viscosa). As the days start to lengthen around the peak of guling (the woi wurrung name for orchid season), their curious flowers open and emit one of the strongest and most beautiful perfumes in our local flora. Unusually, the tiny pale yellow flowers grow directly on the stems, covering the branches with hundreds of little bells. Although difficult to imagine given these strange flowers, tree violets are true violets and are grouped botanically in the family Violaceae. This means they share a common ancestor with the garden pansies and native violet (Viola hederacea) you may be more familiar with.

    
Tree violet flowers and garden pansies. The family resemblance isn’t particularly strong.

Speaking of gardens, tree violets deserve a place in any good habitat garden and are dead easy to grow. Their dense bushy habit and spiny branches create valuable shelter for small birds. After the flowers are finished, the berries are happily snatched up by birds and skinks. It’s no wonder that they were a staple of early restoration projects, particularly along the Yarra and lower Merri. How lucky we are to be blanketed in their delightful perfume now! Although a little slow to establish, they are resilient once they do. When the ecological restoration team at Merri Creek Management Committee were preparing to clear swathes of boxthorn and hawthorn in the Fawkner reaches of the creek earlier this year, quite a few remnant tree violets were found buried beneath. One day, at work, I was tasked with bush-bashing my way through the thickets to find them, then tagging and clearing some space so the forestry mulchers could work around them.

One of many tree violets found buried beneath thickets of weeds in Fawkner.

I also recently had the pleasure of stumbling across a tree violet clinging on for dear life to the rim of Mt Elephant, a large extinct volcano in southwestern Victoria. The brutal wind and sun exposure, and possibly grazing by the resident flock of sheep, meant that it was reduced to a small, dense and incredibly prickly shrub. Nonetheless, it persists! It’s no surprise, then, that in the garden, they respond brilliantly to pruning and can be clipped into hedges, windbreaks or possibly even topiary. They handle fairly shady spots, just as well as full sun, and are tolerant of the heavy Volcanic Plains clay us Merri people know and love. If you haven’t got space in the ground, I’ve had success growing them in a pot. I imagine that if you’re able to keep them trimmed and watered, and don’t mind avoiding the spikes, they could even handle an exposed balcony quite well.

A determined tree violet at Mt Elephant.

By the time you read this, the tree violet flowering season will be starting to wind up, but, if you’re lucky, you can probably still catch the end. Plants growing in shadier areas are a little slower to bloom, so if you head out for a wander in a sheltered part of the creek, soon you may still be able to simply follow your nose… If you miss the flowers this year, keep an eye out for the blue-grey berries that will appear in the coming weeks. Remember where you see them and make a note in your calendar for next August, to be sure you can catch a good whiff!

A sprawling tree Violet at the top of an escarpment near Moomba Park, Fawkner.