Dryandra Formosa

Dryandra Formosa

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Dryandra Formosa is a beautiful Australian Native Flower that I've begun to grow at Swallows Nest Farm.  It is an unusual flower that is from the Proteaceae family, as are many other well known Australian Native flowers.  As recently as 2007 it has been re-classified at a Banksia, so is now known as Banksia Formosa.  Its common name is Showy Dryandra, and it is!

The flowers are golden and at once furry and bristly - a strange combination which makes sense when you see them begin to open more.  The bristles are very firm, almost plastic-like.   A fibrous golden top, when all clumped together, forms the "furry" look.  It has the appearance of velvet and catches the sunlight in a similar way.   

The colour is difficult to describe too - golden orange, or old gold would be my best words to describe it. 

Another feature of this unusual flower is that the leaves almost become part of the flower.  The leaves grow immediately below the flower and are long and deeply zig-zagged.  They are beautiful to use as a cut foliage.

Like most proteaceae plants, what we call the "flowers" are actually many small individual flowers clumped together.  The diagram above shows that each bristle is an individual flower.

With so many flowers in each flower head, there are many opportunities for seeds.  When you look at the seed heads of the Dryandra Formosa you can see why they've been re-classified as Banksias.  The seed heads are very banksia-like, as are the seeds which are very dark and attached to a papery film, just like banksia seeds.  Showy Dryandra grow well from seed.  

Dryandra or Banksia Formosa are a great flower to use for weddings.  You can see how the leaves are put to good use in the boutonnieres above.  I love the way the leaves sit haphazardly.  

The young flowers really catch the light because of the velvety texture.  They look great in corsages too. Here, the young flowers are teamed with Pimelea Nivea or Bushman's Bootlace, Lipstick Boronia, Berzelia buttons and Grevillea.

The effect is different when the flower is more mature and the velvety texture is replaced with the tips of the bristles.  Still lovely, just different.  In this boutonniere, it is teamed with a Blusing Bride Serruria flower, Berzelia buttons, and flowering gum.  

I really love the colour of this flower!  It's not a "hit you in the eye" colour but it just provides so much depth.  There are times when the colour combinations just sing!  I think the wreath above would be a bit bland without the Showy Dryandra.

Again, in a brides bouquet, the Showy Dryandra really makes the colour palette.  There's nothing else that adds the colour and texture quite like these amazing Australian Native blooms.  

In Full Bloom

In Full Bloom

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Spring is coming to an end, and the Tasmanian Waratahs are in full bloom.  The smell of summer is in the air!  Many of the spring flowering leucadendrons are starting to loose their colour now and the summer flowering proteas are getting ready to make their appearance.  Watch out in the next week or so for the bright and beautiful Leucaspermums, commonly known as pincushions, that are popular coming into Christmas.  

I'll be posting about the amazing varieties of pincushions that we have here at Swallows Nest Farm as they begin to flower.  In the meantime, enjoy the last of spring and its spectacular colour!

Tasmanian Waratahs

Tasmanian Waratahs

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This week, I picked my first Tasmanian Waratahs for the season.  I have one bush that flowers in late October - just a bit earlier than the rest.  Almost over night, it seemed to be covered in bright red blooms.

Most people associate the Waratah with New South Wales, probably because its is that states floral emblem, but Victoria and Tasmania are also home to some wonderful species of waratah.  At Swallows Nest Farm, we are lucky to be growing the waratah endemic to Tasmania called Telopea Truncata. It is a smaller flowered plant to its mainland cousins, but size isn't everything!  The Tassie waratah is about the size of a carnation and looks a bit like a cross between a "normal" waratah and a grevillea.  It has lovely bent styles the give it a charming sculptural quality.

The Tasmanian Waratah grows as a large shrub to 3 m, but can that can get to over 8 metres tall.  In the wild, it grows in wet forest areas and flowers in November and December.  It is often picked in the wild for the flower trade. The flowers are striking red making the bush really stand out when its in bloom.  Very rarely, the flowers are actually yellow.  The yellow form has been used to make hybrid waratahs which are available to purchase as garden plants called "Shady Lady Yellow".  It is the only waratah to have a yellow variation.  

I love it that these cheery Tasmanians are ready to pick in the lead-up to Christmas.  As a flower grower, its the plants that help to mark the seasons and this one is such a lovely Christmassy flower.  It brightens up a bouquet and compliments the other flowers that are available in the Christmas season. 

The Tasmanian Waratah is best propagated by seed.  After the plant has flowered it produces some fantanstic seed pods.  I'm a bit of a collector of seed pods and waratah seed pods are definitely worth collecting!


Look out for Tasmanian Waratahs in your florist or in the wild during November and December.  They are a real treat and a great reminder that Christmas is fast approaching!

If you'd like to have a go at growing your own Tasmanian Waratah, you can buy fresh seed collected from Swallows Nest Farm here.

More Waratahs

More Waratahs

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Spring is definitely upon us here in Southern Tasmania.  There are beautiful warm days with glorious blue skies, followed by bitterly cold days with snow and hail, and ferocious winds.  The grass is thickening and lush green, and there is a smell in the air that promises summer.  

At Swallows Nest farm, the flower thats getting the most attention is still the Waratah.  We have a few  varieties - there are the large early flowering ones, and then the later pinkish ones.  We have some late flowering rich reds and some wonderful Wirrimbirra White.  They flower from September through to October and into November when the Tasmanian Waratah, Telopea Truncata, starts to flower.  

I came across the following picture on the internet recently and thought it was a wonderful use of a pink waratah.  I certainly hadn't seen them in a bouquet like this before.  Our white waratahs are popular for wedding bouquets, but these look fabulous and striking too.  Great idea.

Of course, as the rest of our waratahs begin to pop, I will be putting up pictures of them.  The differences in varieties can be quite amazing. 

The other news is that I'm planning a small giveaway! Stay tuned - details will follow ...

The Waratah's Are Out

The Waratah's Are Out

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Today, I picked my first Waratah of the season.  What a stunning flower, the Waratah is.  It is an Australian Native, and the floral emblem of New South Wales.  We grow a number of different Waratah or Telopea hybrids at Swallows Nest.  They are characterised by their long (up to 1 metre) strait stems, and large red showy flowers that are long lasting.  

The Waratah is from the Proteaceae family and grows from a lignotuber, a swelling in the root crown that acts as a protection from fire.  The plant stores nutrients and buds in the lignotuber, and can sprout from below ground level.  Because of this, cutting the flowers of a Waratah encourage more stems to sprout until you get a very bushy plant with many many stems.  Some cut flower growers have very prolific plants producing up to 400 stems each, in a season.  Ours are not quite up to that yet, but we are working on it!  

Over summer the plant focuses on producing stems.  Each stem forms a single bud.  Then over late winter the bud begins to swell.  

Over a period of weeks, they begin to open and reveal the flower.  Waratahs seems to slowly unpack themselves in stages.  The outer "petals" are actually modified leaves called bracts.  Inside the bracts are many small flowers arranged in a dome shape to form what we think of as the Waratah flower.  These individual little flowers seem to unfold and arrange themselves in the recognisable domed shape before they start to actually open.  

You can see in the picture above how the little flowerets begin to open at the outside and work their way to the middle of the dome.  

A tip for buying or picking Waratahs is to select ones that have just begun to open their little flowerets.  This will usually start on the sunny side of the plant.  Once a few of styles are open, they are ready to pick.  This will give them a much longer vase-life.  When buying Waratahs, look for ones that are not completely open.  This will give you longer to enjoy them.

At Swallows Nest Farm, we have a number of different varieties of hybrid Waratahs.  The first flowers usually appear in early September, and later flowering varieties keep appearing until mid to late December. We have some beautiful white ones too, which I'll feature when they start to flower in a few weeks.  

These popular flowers are a wonderful bold statement that spring is here!

Truly Tasmanian - The Pineapple Candle Heath

Truly Tasmanian - The Pineapple Candle Heath

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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.