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 ...

We've Struck Gold

We've Struck Gold

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Please excuse the cheesy title of this post, but this beautiful spring flowering leucadendron is called Safari Goldstrike.  I wrote about it earlier in the year.  It was our first new planting after we took over the protea farm 4 years ago, and it has been a great success.  This year is the first big harvest, with the plants beginning to produce lots of saleable stems.  If you want to see the before and after shots, click on the link.

For most of the year, Safari Goldstrike are a green leaucadendron with a slightly pink tip, as seen in the photo above.  Many florists use them at this stage.  They are long lasting and a great accent flower, the green really glowing among soft pastels, or natives. 

You can see them being used above in this native arrangement.  Depending upon the weather conditions, sometime in August these unassuming leuco's decide its their time to shine, and they begin to change colour and open into the large golden blooms that give them their name.  

They really glow with colour and their large, teacup shaped flowers just shout "look at me".  

We are so proud of these great flowers - our first planting.  They are versatile all year round, but are definitely a spectacular spring-flowering leucadendron.

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.  

Lovely Leuco's

Lovely Leuco's

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Leaucadendrons are one of the most popular flowers in the florist trade.  They are incredibly long lasting, they are available all year round, and come in a range of colours.  They look equally happy amongst natives, or more traditional flowers.  And yet, many people, although they would recognise them, wouldn't have heard of them.  We grow lots of varieties of Leucadendrons at the Swallows Nest.  

At the moment, most of the Leuco's (as we call them) are rich red.  We have three main varieties of red Leucos, all with slightly different properties.  This one, called Safari Sunset is the most popular Leucadendron grown worldwide.  It is a rich deep red, has long strait stems up to 1 mt, and is sturdy.  It has a medium sized flower head.  

If you weren't familiar with Leucadendrons before, I'm sure you'll recognise them if you look for them, peeping out from a bouquet at a florist or sold in lovely large bunches at flower markets.  

Sugar Bush

Sugar Bush

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It is generally thought that winter isn't a great time for flowers, but proteas are the exception to this.  There are many protea species that flower in autumn and winter, when other flowers are hard to find.  They grow through spring and summer, sending up long stems, and then in autumn they set buds and begin to flower.  Three years ago, we planted some new proteas called Protea Repens or Sugar Bush.  They have flowered for the first time this season, beginning in autumn, and continuing now into early winter.  I am delighted with them.   They are quite different to our standard Pink Ice protea.  They are waxy rather than hairy (!) and don't have the silvery bloom that many common proteas have.  When we have a new flower, I love to put a few on my kitchen windowsill and watch them open over days and weeks - I guess as a kind of road test!  Here are some of our new beauty.

We have spectacular sunsets at Swallow Nest Farm.  I think that the autumn sunsets are the best.  Its something about the autumn light here in Tasmania - and probably helped by a bit of smoke from Forestry burn offs.  This was the sunset that provided the soft lighting in the protea photo above it.

As the Sugar Bush flower opens, its colour starts to soften, and the centre structure starts to collapse into a wider, less tidy shape. I think its quite beautiful.

The Silver Tree

The Silver Tree

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At Swallows Nest Farm, we grow one of the most beautiful foliage plants of the proteaceae family.  It's commonly named the Silver Tree, but its actually a Leucadendron with the proper name of Leucadendron Argenteum.  (Just Latin for silver, really!)  It really does look spectacular at this time of year, and provides the most beautiful soft textured foliage with a silvery green colour that perfectly compliments the other proteas flowering at the same time.

The Silver Tree does actually grow to small tree proportions, but if it is picked regularly, like it is in the cut flower trade, it remains at a reachable height.  Some of our trees have been unpruned for a while and we were so excited to find that the female trees began to produce the most spectacular cones.  They begin as a soft silvery green, like the leaves, but look like they are made of metal.  When they dry, you end up with a beautifully structured cone, about the size of a tennis ball, on the end of a long stem.  They make a great statement in a vase, as a dried flower.

The bark of the Silver Tree is unusual too.  In their native South Africa, they were at one stage used as a firewood tree, because they grow quickly and burn well.  It's unusual wood - quite light, but the bark! I think it looks like elephant skin!

It's a remarkable tree, and we love growing it!