Australian Native Plants at the ANBG Canberra

[art600]

Paul

Wonderful shots - looking forward to the next instalment

[Anthony Darby]

That plant with the big leaves (RHS of pic 1) looks like something I have in my classroom from Trinidad (Tarot?)

edit by M: suggestion from Paddy:

Anthony,
I wonder is the plant Colocasia esculenta? It looks quite like it though I find the leaves hang down in a more pronounced manner and are more angular at the shoulder, so to speak. I bought a plant of colocasia earlier in the summer, potted it into a very large pot, watered it generously daily and fed it regularly and it has made huge growth, enormous leaves up to a metre long and 60cm wide. Now, there is a black-leaved cultivar available which is absolutely delicious, and quite cheap.

Paddy

[David Nicholson]

Cracking start Paul and your introductions are spot on. Looking forward to more.

[Armin]

Paul,
thank you for introducing a total different flora to us from the NH.
Very interesting.

[Paddy Tobin]

Edit by M : this first comment refers to some lovely pix by Miriam, showing how well the Aussie plants can do in Israel: these have been moved to this page: http://www.srgc.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=2363.0   

  Miriam,

Please stop! I can accept that I might have difficulty growing southern hemisphere plants and not be terribly upset about it. But now I see you growing them to perfection so much closer to home and am terribly jealous. How lucky for you to be able to grow such a selection of plants, beautiful indeed.

Many thanks for posting and adding to Paul's thread. Paddy

And what a strange name for a plant Grevillia 'Spiderman' !

Anthony,
I wonder is the plant Colocasia esculenta? It looks quite like it though I find the leaves hang down in a more pronounced manner and are more angular at the shoulder, so to speak. I bought a plant of colocasia earlier in the summer, potted it into a very large pot, watered it generously daily and fed it regularly and it has made huge growth, enormous leaves up to a metre long and 60cm wide. Now, there is a black-leaved cultivar available which is absolutely delicious, and quite cheap.

Paddy

[Paul T]

Anthony,

Yes, it is one of the Taro species I think.  When I start work again I'll have a check in there for the name tag and see exactly what it is.

Miriam,

Nice to see our natives overseas as well! 

Here's a few more.....

Just outside the main entrance (there are a couple in the grounds as well) is a fine example of the Queensland Bottle Tree, Brachychiton rupestris.  The trunk is a water storage device for hard times for the tree.  You just want to go up and hug it, it looks so cool.  One of the other ones in the gardens they can't actually plant anything near for just that reason.... everyone wants to go and give it a hug and end up standing on anything planted between it and the nearby path.  I can't help it, I brought a small one recently at a nursery.... heaven knows where I'm going to plant it.    Into a pot for now.  The one in the picture has a trunk about 2 1/2 feet thick, and the plant would be about 6m tall?  I really must look at it more closely to work out dimensions.  I never really thought about it until I tried to describe it here.

Calothamnus quadrifidis sort of resembles a bottlebrush (Callistemon at first glance, but they are actually quite different.  In the Calothamnus the flowers are usually only on one side, not in a complete cylinder, and they often emerge straight from the stem, rather than being part of the new growth as in Callistemons.  The plant in the picture is about 1.6m high from memory, with about a 2.5m spread on it.  The striking red flowers are set off beautifully by the bluish foliage.  I have a form of this in my garden as well, because I just adore it!!  My form has a much softer fuzzier foliage.... you can buy either type it seems as I have seen both forms for sale at different places.  Both the same species, just somewhat different in the leaf type.

The last 3 pics here are of different stages of the flowers of Hakea laurina.  While some Hakea are not so nice (in fact some really are just downright ugly!  ) this species and a number of others are absolutely stunning.  Each ball of open flowers on this species is well bigger than a golf ball, and you can see from the pictures how they look from when they start to open until they go through to darker as they fade.  Another plant I HAD to buy when I saw it for sale at a nursery, but again I guess it is doomed to a pot for the moment.  The plant these flowers were on (I don't have a picture, but I will try to rectify that at some point) is about 3m tall, and about 2.5m wide.  Quite an open, sort of woody shrub.  Out of flowers the plant isn't that noticeable, but when it is in flower it is wonderful.  Both this and the last one are great for nectar feeding birds.

[Paul T]

The Lomatia tinctoria ssp multiflora to me looks very much like a species of Grevillea but I haven't looked into how closely allied it is.  I am guessing quite closely though.  The plant is about 1.8m high and 2.5 to 3m wide, very light and airy and not particularly easy to get a good picture of.    The flowerhead in the picture is about a foot long all up, but that is really a spray of smaller balls of flowers.  I'll be interested to watch this and see if/when it is fully in flower, as I think this might have been a one-off flowering as there were so few of them.  Maybe it should be flowering at a different time of year?  I guess we'll find out.

And lastly for now, a lovely little shrub.... some form of Swainsonia but they hybridise a bit so I don't have a species name for it.  Bright flowers, on shrubs to about 4 feet high, with "pea pod" seed pods.  They come in a range of red through to bright pink.  Very noticeable in flower, and they flower for a long period.

The Correa 'Marian's Marvel is easily available in garden centres here, as are so many of the genus.  Great plants ranging from ground covers to medium shrubs, and loved by the birds, particularly as they flower throughout winter.  The plant in the picture was about 1.5m tall, but in a garden situation you'd likely keep it trimmed a little to keep it more dense.  Each flower is about an inch long, and there were hundreds out on the plant in the picture.

Will try to go through and prepare some more pictures this evening.  Glad you're all enjoying them.

[Paul T]

Howdy All,

I've started a separate topic for Australian native plants in our own gardens, for those of us that grow them.  I thought it better to keep the Australian National Botanic Gardens thread mostly separated (No Miriam, I don't mind in the slightest that you posted your pics here.  They're lovely!) from my own garden as the majority of the things in this thread I would most likely have problems growing in my own garden either due to needing warmer microclimates or better draining soil (the latter being the most important barrier to my garden most likely... well that and space.  ).
edit by M: I have moved Miriam's pix to the Australian Native plants in our gardens thread! See here: http://www.srgc.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=2363.msg53600#msg53600
OK, on to more pics from the ANBG....

I've mentioned the Rockery area previously.... well here are a couple of pictures of part of it.  It is currently a very open, sunny area with garden beds built up with large rocks etc.  Drainage is pretty much perfect, and it is most definitely hot and sunny in summer.  Perspectives don't really show well in the bigger pics.... those green grass shoots in the back of "Rockery 2" are actually about 10 feet tall and way down at the foot of the rockery area to the left hand side of the waterfall I shows in the first pics.  They are actually almost behind the big spreading Banksia next to the path I showed yesterday.  They are Gymea lilies, and I'll show them at another time when the flowers actually open.

The following pics are all from within this rockery area.

The Scleranthus biflorus is a mounding plant, relatively solid to the casual touch.  It just produces these dense green mounds in hot and sunny areas.  Rather a cool plant if you have it growing in the right conditions.  Looks like it should be soft and grassy, but it isn't.  Biggest mound in the picture might be around 6 inches tall, by abut 2 feet in length.

Also pictured is a small flat daisy type thingy (to be precise!  ) called Brachycome rigidula.  The flower is about an inch and a half wide, with the plant being less than a foot wide in total.  There are a lot of different Brachycome species and varieties, this is just an example of one of them.

[Paul T]

Bossiaea walkeri is an absolute pain to photograph as a plant.  It is basically a collection of long canes, leaning out from underneath another plant.  This is partially a product of the position it is growing, and partially the type of plant growth.  There are a few leaves, but nothing particularly noticeable as a plant, and altogether a hassle to try to photograph.  The first pic is the best I could do to show you what it sort of looks like.  The flowers on the other hand are tiny pieces of fire, growing straight off the stems.  You can see a couple of other buds starting to appear off the stem near the open flower.

Something that grows easily in gardens as well as at the ANBG is Crowea exalata.  It is a small shrub, only to a few feet high at the most (or at least the available clones anyway), with bright pink flowers about an inch across for many months of the year.  My plant at home is virtually permanently in flower, or at least there always seems to be at least a couple of flowers on it any time I think to look for them.  There may be times that it isn't flowering, but they can't be for that long.  A real treasure!

I've photographed the whole plant of the Epacris robusta just to show that a scrappy plant growing in quite harsh conditions can still have the most beautiful flowers.  Each of the flowers is a bit under 1cm long, but you miss them if you aren't looking for them.  But the flowers themselves are beautiful.  I would imagine that this plant grown in softer conditions could likely be denser and more showy, but this shows how well it can do with much more extreme conditions.  The plant in the picture is about 2 1/2 feet tall and across.

[Paddy Tobin]

If non-gardeners looked at this thread they would surely understand what it is gardeners find so fascinating about plants. The variety, amazing design and growth habit of these plants is so clearly extraordinary that they would immediately see the attraction.

Wonderful selection of plants.

Paddy

[Miriam]

Paddy,
You have such beautiful plants in your climate that I wish I could grow them here in Israel, like: Hosta, Helleborus, Paeonia and more...
So every climate has its advantages.
About Grevillia 'Spiderman'-this is how they called this plant in the nursery where I have bought it...I don't know why

[David Nicholson]

Marvellous Paul, really enjoyable. My favourites so far-Hakea laurina, Swainsonia and Crowea exalata.

Brian, if you decided to walk out of Tesco without paying (or some other similar minor misdemeanor) then a benign Judge could well have you 'transported'. You would then have ample opportunity to see Australian Native Plants and at the same time would not feel out of place with your hosts!

[ranunculus]

Knowing Brian's luck he would end up breaking rocks in an East Lancashire quarry!

Wonderful topic Paul ... and excellent images.  Many thanks.

[Paddy Tobin]

Miriam,

We say, "Is glas iad na cnoic i bhfad uainn" - faraway hill are green.

We will always wish to grow the plants we see growing in other countries. I grow very few of our native plants in my garden but the native plants of other countries all seem so very interesting.

I enjoyed seeing your photographs and wished so much I could grow the plants here in Ireland.

Best wishes, Paddy

[Armin]

Paul,
thank you for this excursion of Australian native plants.