Australian Native Plants at the ANBG Canberra

[Paul T]

Thanks All,

Ahsley,

At the time I started this I also started a topic for Aussie natives in our gardens, so that I could show stuff from my place and Fermi's etc.  The stuff grown at the ANBG is in a lot of cases not actually suited to the conditions in Canberra, but microclimates are located for them to be successful.  The ANBG is on a hillside which helps, as they don't get the heavy frost pockets etc.

Glad you're all enjoying these.

[Lesley Cox]

Ti Tree is generally the common name for the NZ species Leptospermum scoparium (Maori name, Manuka) and it is from this that a major industry has grown in NZ for its oil, and for manuka honey, when the bee hives are placed in manuka bush for the nectar in the flowers. It is a very strongly flavoured honey and perhaps not what one would want on one's morning toast but it has antibiotic qualities and is available in different strengths. Manuka honey is used here now, instead of regular antibiotics, to heal surface injuries such as cuts, grazes and the awful ulcers that elderly people get on their legs which normally take months to heal, if they ever do, properly. Manuka honey as a dressing clears them up very quickly.  Even main steam doctors and hospitals have embraced it for its healing properties, as has one of our favourite Forumists.

The Australian leptospermums are generally more spectacular in flower, though L. scoparium has a number of different selected cultivars with pink, crimson or double coloured flowers. Most Aust species are marginally hardy here.

[Maggi Young]

I've been doing a little research myself and it seems to me that the term Tea-Tree is usually applied to the Australian product, derived from
Melaleuca alternifolia, while the T-tree  refers to the New Zealand oil, from the Leptospermum or Manuka.
Both jolly useful plants, that's for sure.

[Paul T]

Interesting, I had no idea that the NZ Manuka honey came from a Leptospermum.

[Paddy Tobin]

Paul,

You are continuing with a fabulous selection of your Australian plants, great selection and great photographs. The Leptospermums are outstanding and I certainly would like to grow the colour variations you have shown. The more common reds and pinks grow very well here, good tough plants, and one on the boundary of my garden is about 10 feet high. I also have one of the compact ones and it is doing very well also.

You also showed a selection of the olearias - a personal hate of mine. For some reason I despise these plants though might make an exception for Olearia x traversii (hope I have the name correct).

Paddy

[Paul T]

Pady,

Ah well, can't please everyone!    Before working there I'd never heard of Olearia, so you have more experience of actually growing them than I do.  Glad you're enjoying the other pics though. 

[Lesley Cox]

I'm not fond of Olearias either, though I had a good hedge of one species some years ago. I would have got rid of it except for the fact that hundreds of stick insects lived and presumably bred in it. For the same reason, I could never trim it so it got very shaggy in time.

[Linda_Foulis]

Wow!    How much fun it is to see all these wonderful plants Paul, very much enjoying going through this thread.  Please keep it up.

[arillady]

Thanks Paul for posting so many lovely natives. I don't have that many but I do like to get Eremophila species. Boronias are sometimes treated as a potted plant - I can't get them to live here in South Australia - but the perfume is divine!! One of the nicest you could find. I would love to walk through an area of them.

[Paul T]

Thanks Linda and Pat,

I haven't had a chance to take many photos recently, but I do have a few still to load.  Hopefully in the next couple of days. 

[ruweiss]

Paul, thank you so much for showing us these exotic beauties,from most of them
I have never seen and heard before.

[Paul T]

You're welcome Rudi.  Took lots of photos yesterday as well, so should be plenty posted when I get the chance to prepare and upload them.

[shelagh]

Hi Paul, super pictures. I'm having to keep a pad next to the PC to write down all my wants.  I like the Olearias although the only one we grow is O nummularifolia 'Little Lou' as it is just right for the show bench.  Please keep this thread going it's wonderful.

[Paul T]

Howdy All,

I finally got some time tonight to prepare some pics for posting.  These are pics from the last couple of weeks, not including all the pics I took this week (so there will be plenty more pics when I get the chance to prepare some more).

Enjoy.......


Another of the bottlebrush .... Callistemon viridiflorus, which is a medium size shrub to a couple of metres unless it is really happy and then it can get a little bigger than that.  Flowers really are a pretty pure green.



Dietes robinsoniana is the only Dietes representative in Australia.  It grows to about 5 feet tall, with each flower opening to around 12cm wide.  Very impressive plant, particularly when a flower stem may have a half dozen flowers open on it at the same time.  As with so many others in the genus the flowers only last a short time.



This is the "Flannel Flower" (Actinotis helanthi, with it's flowers that are furry and lovely silver furry leaves.  Soft and emminently touchable.  We have a seeding colony in one particular location, despite the usual difficulties in growing them from seed.  It seems that a large gravel mulch is ideal conditions for the seed to germinate!



This Jacksonia scoparia ssp scoparia was so bright when in flower.  You just couldn't miss it.  The plant is fairly non-descript and you don't see it except when it is in flower.  The plants in the picture were around 3m tall, weeping in habit.  Scrappy plant the rest of the time (at least in our conditions here), but Oh what a show when in flower.




This stunner is Kunzea pulchella.  At first glance it looks like a bottlebrush, but the floral arrangement is quite different.  Seems to get about 4 or 5 feet tall in our condtions, with decidedly weeping stems.  The red is just so strong!

[Paul T]

And here's a couple more Leptospermum to add to those I have posted before....


Leptospermum grandifolium


Leptospermum rotundifolium 'Lavender Queen' is a shrub to about 6 feet tall and with a good covering of flowers.



Myoporum floribundum has very thin, downward hanging leaves which are rather interesting in their own right, but when it comes into flower it is quite spectacular, even though each flower is less than 1cm wide.  SO many flowers are produced that the tops of each stem are covered in white, slightly reminiscent of snow if you quint your eyes just right.    The bugs adore them, crawling over all the flowers and enjoying the honey scent.  I have a small plant of this at home in my garden as well, but it has a long way to go before it looks as spectacular as the specimens in the picture. 


Some don't like Olearia, but this one is such a delicate shade of mauve.  It is labelled as Olearia ramulosa sens lat and seems to be a small grower to perhaps 5ocm tall.  The delicate colour of the flowers is just beautiful, and I very much wish I was growing it in my own garden.  Not the spectacle of Olearia phloggopappa, but nicer in it's own way to me at least.


This appears to be a Pattersonia sp. but I have no name further than that.  Very small, only to about 15cm tall with flowers about 3.5cm wide.  It looks similar to something I have had come up from seed in a plant I received from Tasmania a few years ago, but mine hasn't flowered as yet.  I can but hope it might be the same thing.



Pelargonium australe is a bit weedy in places at the ANBG but it puts on a stunning display for months on end.  The plants are to maybe 50cm tall, and the flowers go on endlessly through the warmer months.