Making Flour from Lomandra longifolia (Spiny Headed Mat Rush)
Hi again!
It was a busy summer here at Peppermint Ridge as we’ve moved from monthly events to fortnightly lunches on the 2nd and 4th Sundays of the month (come visit us)!
Our native garden is flourishing and we love this time of year as the lemon myrtles are flowering, giving the bees a lovely nectar meal to feast upon. But this year has been particularly special as we are also seeing our first fruit from our Davidson’s Plums and our blue quandong has a massive fruit set that is swelling fast.
We’re also starting new projects, like this one: drying the seed heads of the Lomandra longifolia (spiny headed mat rush, basket grass). Lomandra longifolia was very useful plant to aboriginal people; they used the leaves to make fine baskets and the seeds to make flour.
We’re hoping to have a go at making flour using the seeds. The seeds are inside the yellow casing and are as large as a grain of rice–it should grind up easily!
Want to have a go at it yourself? Here are our tips for growing and harvesting the seeds.
Tip 1: Cover the seed heads with an old pillow case to catch them as the casing pops open. Will let you know how the little cakes taste when we make them.
Tip 2: Lomandra longifolia is dioecious so you will need 1 male plant to several females to get any seeds.
And if you’re interested in making baskets using this amazing native plant, come along to the Basket Weaving workshop at the farm on April 1. Aboriginal artist Cassie Leatham will be using the leaves of this plant to make the baskets and share her knowledge with you.