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Play Plants in Tasmania

© Allyso

Hello! Have you ever played with plants? When I was a kid I used to read stories about British children playing with conkers. We don't do things like that, but we do have other plants that are fun to play with. I'm going to tell you about some of them.

Four leaf clovers are fun. I used to know two patches where we could always find them. One was in front of the tractor shed on a relative's farm. That one was gone last time I went to look. The other is down by the river. We pick these and press them between paper sheets and heavy books, then keep them or give them away on home-made cards as luck charms.

We sometimes play soliders with plantain heads. These sturdy stems grow to about 20 cm (around 8 inches) and we select a stem each then take it in turns to strike the opponent's "soldier". A bit gruesome, come to think of it.

Milkweed grows along the road. It has fat soft leaves and three-lobed seed pods that exude white juice. We used to pretend these were cows! Then we discovered the juice was really bad if it got in the eye, so we stopped doing it.

Tansy stems, the dry ones, made good arrows. We made bows from thin willow sticks and hay-string. I don't think we ever hit the rock we were aiming for, but at least we didn't hit anything else either.

Teasels grow wild down by the creek and the river. We don't actually play with them, because they're so prickly, but some people pick them. They dry the heads then spray-paint them silver or gold for decorations.

Another decorator plant is honesty. My granny grew lots of it, both purple and white, and when the seed heads dried she would rub off the outer coating and leave the silvery discs to shine out. She sold these at church fetes.

Pinecones are good to dry and spray-paint for decorations, and sometimes we gather them to feed our cockatoos.

Gumnuts are fun to collect, because they came in such lovely shades of blue, grey and silver. They smell pleasant, too.

Of course we play with dandelion clocks, by blowing them and calling the hours as we do so, and we also make daisy chains from the daisies that grow on the lawn or in the paddocks.

Plums grow semi-wild in Tassie. Most farms and lots of gardens have at least one or two plum trees. Children eat the cherry plums in summer, and have pip-spitting competitions. Another trick with a plum pip is to hold it between finger and thumb and squeeze. It flips away and some people can hit a tree several metres away!

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