AUSTRALIAN FLORA

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 76, 22 January 1947, Page 7

AUSTRALIAN FLORA

BEAUTIFUL NATIVE FLOWERS AND SHRUBS

There are 13,000 varieties of flowering plants in Australia, with a marked concentration in the far south-western corner of the continent, writes Mr E. V. E. Neill. In this botanist’s paradise are found 3000 different varieties of plants, few if any, of which are found anywhere else in the world. There' are whole families of plants that are almost or quite restricted to Australia. For example, the trigger flowers, pink-eyes, epacrid heaths, and emu-bushes are found nowhere else.

Many of Australia’s most colourful wild .flowers and rarer blooms were on display for the benefit of city people recently when the Field Naturalists’ Club of Victoria organised an exhibition in Melbourne. The display was a complete Australian nature show, all exhibits being native to that country. Specimens came from as far afield as Western Australia. Among these were clinthus speciosus (Sturt Dessert pea) and primelia physodes (Qualup Bell). They were flown

1800 miles across the continent from Perth, and arrived in perfect condition. Among the most striking of the exhibits was the banksia coccinea, whose flower heads provide a beautiful contrast of scarlet and silver grey. The melaleuca fulgens, another beautiful specimen, is considered to be one of Australia’s most spectacular bottle-brush" type of tea tree, with its crimson flowers with yellow-tipped stamens. Australia’s most handsome annual, the Sturt Desert pea, provided a bright splash of colour, but in its restricted setting it gave but the merest suggestion of the beauty it possesses in its natural habitat, where it carpets the ground with acres of scarlet. It grows over wide areas of low rainfall country, demonstrating that the more arid the soil the more colourful the flower. In the orchid section pride • of place was given to Dendrobium speciosum, which is found throughout the coastal regions of easteim Australia. It can be seen growing profusely among the rocks and in the crevices of the cliffs in many of the small bays between northern Victoria and Sydney. Its flowers are pendulous with many hundreds of blooms to a stem. They are small and of a creamy colour, but as a mass they are very beautiful. The “dendronbiums” are seen to advantage only in their wild state. The flowers do not last when picked and so this variety is not popular with florists, as are the larger Australian orchids.