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.  

Thryptomene

Thryptomene

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Thryptomene is a beautiful Australian native shrub that we grow here at Swallows Nest.  This variety is Grampians Thryptomene, found as the name suggests in the Grampians region in Victoria.  It is extensively picked in the wild there, for the cut flower trade.  We only have a small number of bushes here, but they are well established and very productive. 

In mid to late winter,  the tiny bright pink buds begin to burst into dainty little flowers that erupt between the leaves and cover the length of the branches.  They continue to flower for the next few months.  I think they have the look of snow laden branches at this time of the year.

One of the features of Thryptomene is it's beautiful aromatic smell.  Fresh, clean and foresty, it really lingers.  I love it!  

Thryptomene is long lasting as a cut flower.  It looks great as a filler in a bouquet and adds a fresh scent and a touch of authentic Australian winter.  Look out for it in florists during the cooler months!