Richea Dracophylla

Richea Dracophylla

Comment   

This week, I've been picking Richea Dracophylla.  They are an Australian native flower, endemic to Tasmania, although many people say they've never seen them before.  It's such a pity that we are unaware of the natural beauty that occurs in our own part of the world.  These flowers are long lasting, if you pick them just as they are opening.  They are spectacular in a strong, bold sculptural arrangement, but equally at home in a soft mixed bouquet of natives.  I love them, and am so proud to be able to grow them commercially.  

It's tricky taming wild plants though - and these Richea Dracophyllya are definitely wild! They grow in the wet forest and mountain regions of southern Tasmania - you can find them on the slopes of Mount Wellington in Hobart.  They can be quite unruly, and their leaves are a little spiky.  In the wild, they are described as "sparsely branched" but my cultivated specimens are certainly not that!   They are densely branched and thick, requiring gloves to get in and prune them.  They need pruning to produce long upright stems, otherwise the flower spikes can grow an funny angles searching for the sun.

The plants themselves, as with many bush plants, don't really announce themselves until they start to flower.  But the flower spikes really do say "look at me"!  They sometimes have a deep pink blush to the bracts, which then brown and fall off revealing the rice-like flowers underneath.  Their petals are fused together to form a little cap, which falls off and reveals the stamen.  All of this gives the flower a rich textural appearance to add to its strong structural look.

I decided to get up close and personal with these little tiny flowers, using my macro lens.  Lots of fun and such a fascinating look at things that are normally lost to the naked eye.

How cute are the little rice-like flowers peeping out from behind the bracts?!

In this photo you can see that the "rice" are like the petals of the flower that have been fused together - they slip off the flower as it matures, to reveal the stamen.

Little "rice" petals.

A tangle of stamen awash with pollen.

Such a fascinating and beautiful structure!  In my internet browsing about the Richea Dracophylla,  I found a blog by a self-confessed Tasmanian plant nerd who even tried the nectar in his exploration of Tasmanian Bush Tucker.  So apparently, they taste good too!

So I hope I'm doing my bit to spread the word about the beauty of native flowers, and especially Tasmanian ones - they are really exceptional!  I hope you get a chance to enjoy them sometime.

Truly Tasmanian - The Pineapple Candle Heath

Truly Tasmanian - The Pineapple Candle Heath

Comment   

Meet the Pineapple Candle Heath, or Richea Dracaphylla,  a truly Tasmanian flower.  When I first discovered this plant, I thought it looked like it should be a tropical bloom - some type of rainforest rarity that could be feasted on by colorful tropical birds.  But its home is the temperate rainforest slopes of Mount Wellington and other high altitude rainforests - moist and cold, the soil wet with snow-melt and a dense canopy of trees over head.  It is endemic or native to Tasmania.  These flowers have been harvested in the wild, but at Swallows Nest we have some wonderful well established plants that are able to be pruned and trained to produce lovely long stems.  

Pruning these plants is no mean feat!  They are as spiky as they look and very dense.  Gloves are required!  But the effort is worth it when the lovely long stems produce beautiful tall flower spikes.  Flowering time is usually the spring months but we often get flowers here much earlier - July and August.  Flowers can also surprise us at other times of the year, but August is usually when they are really starting to bloom in earnest.   

The spiky leaves, about 20cm long, spiral up the stem and the flower emerges from the crown of the spiral.  These flowers are sometimes called Riceflower, because of the obvious likeness.   The rice-looking part is actually the petals of the flower that are fused together.  They fall off when the stamen in mature.  These petals are grouped together and sheathed by bracts that often carry a pink or red tinge.  

In this picture, you can just see the flower starting to emerge from the spiral of leaves on the stem.  

In this picture, you can see how the bracts surround the petals.  There are some petals peeping out on the left.  The bract will open and eventually fall off.

Richea Dracophylla, or Pineapple Candle Heath are a very architectural flower - a strong bold shape.  But they can also be softened by adding them to other natives.  They are a beautiful and unusual flower - uniquely Tasmanian.