WA Radio Scanner Users' Group

Has the world gone too PC?
Which and why?

I've always known them as a Black Boy. However with the correct name being a Grass Tree I have nothing against that either.

Have heard a message to 6ar that went along the lines of "First alarm scrub fire. Black boy on fire. Lit by person of similiar description"

Correct name is Xanthorrea Australis, anything else is a common name, but if you choose to call them Black boys, you may risk offending indigenous Australians.

i've always known them as blackboys

I've known them as blackboys also from when I first arrived in Australia as a kid. The name is now imprinted into my brain and I suspect that it's what I'll continue to call them.

However I do note that "grass tree" is becoming more common as a name now.

observer wrote:Have heard a message to 6ar that went along the lines of "First alarm scrub fire. Black boy on fire. Lit by person of similiar description"

Now my screen is pebble dashed with coffee...

yorky wrote:I've always known them as a Black Boy. However with the correct name being a Grass Tree I have nothing against that either.

Whilst Xanthorrea Australis is the correct botanical name, the commonly accepted name for them is Western Australian Grass Tree, which has been abreviated simply to Grass Tree. Blackboy is of course the long established colloquial name that we all grew up with

X. australis is actually limited to a arc through mid NSW down the mountains and coast to western Victoria.

You are more likely to see X. gracilis or one of the other Xanthorrhoea sp. down in the Lower West, SW and Great Southern.

Just to confuse things with another piece of trivia, Kingia australis also looks very similar until it starts flowering. It was called Black Gin once upon a time as it was thought to be the female form of the grass tree.

As far as I know, also known as a Balga (I believe the Aboriginal name for them)

robbage wrote:As far as I know, also known as a Balga (I believe the Aboriginal name for them)

Yep, I'd also heard that "balga" was the Nyoongar term for the blackboy/grass-tree...

Always been Xanthorrea preiseii to me.
http://images.google.com.au/images?hl=e ... CBwQsAQwAw

WPXZBP wrote:Always been Xanthorrea preiseii to me.
http://images.google.com.au/images?hl=e ... CBwQsAQwAw

Thankyou mate,

Who knew we had such a depth of closet botanists here I love it

Have you seen the DEC florabase site? http://florabase.dec.wa.gov.au/search/a ... nthorrhoea