Wednesday, May 21, 2025

Plants

Plant PalettePlants

Wax flower puts on a show

Label: Chamelaucium uncinatum ‘University’

ACRA Registration 143 (November 1982)

Family: Myrtaceae

Origin: Chamelaucium uncinatum ‘University’ is a form of Chamelaucium uncinatum originally selected from plants growing at the University of Western Australia by the late Oliver J Dowell. It has been grown commonly in cultivation since the early 1960’s.… Continue reading

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Botanic Gardens

World class conservatory for the nation’s capital

By Peter Byron

The Ian Potter National Conservatory (Conservatory) is the first major development from the Australian National Botanic Gardens’ (ANBG) 20-year Master Plan, announced by the Australian Government in June 2015. The Conservatory will be a national and international showcase of some of Australia’s most beautiful and unusual tropical native flora.Continue reading

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Plant PalettePlants

Forager’s delight attracts birds and butterflies

By Bruce Thompson

Common Name: Native Mulberry, White Nettle, False Stinger, Queensland Grass-Cloth Plant, Koomeroo-Koomeroo, Kongangn, Thil-la-wo

Genus: Pipturus

Species: argenteus

Family: Urticaceae

Origin: Occurs in coastal range lowland rainforests, on the edges of riverine communities and regrowth with occasional inundation, damp gullies and coral cays from Lismore to Papua New Guinea.… Continue reading

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Botanic Gardens

Wardian Cases, an Adelaide and South Australian perspective

By John Sandham

In the British summer of 1829, while undertaking the collection of a moth pupa into a sealed glass vial, Dr Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward (1791-1868) observed that fern spores and grass seed, captured within the closed environment, could germinate and grow without any outside assistance.Continue reading

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Plant PalettePlants

Looks like a Tibouchina but tastes like a jam!

By Bruce Thompson

Common Name: Blue Tongue, Native Lasiandra, Indian Rhododendron, Malabar Rhododendron, Singapore Rhododendron

Genus: Melastoma

Species: malabrathicum subsp. malabrathicum

Family: Melostomaceae

Origin: A pan-tropical species occurring in open forest and disturbed rainforest in north Queensland, down to Kempsey in New South Wales, the Kimberley region in Western Australia, the Northern Territory as well as Indomalaya and Japan.… Continue reading

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Botanic Gardens

Brisbane’s Botanic Gardens showcases the life of ferns

By Dale Arvidsson –

Long before today’s online world created an insatiable desire for exotic and unusual indoor plants, pteridomania, a Victorian craze between the 1840s and 1890s, saw the desire to collect ferns in Britain and its colonies. Glass houses, conservatories and ‘stumparies’, naturalistic displays of felled trees and exposed roots often shrouded by hardy ferns, allowed the wealthy insatiable collectors to display ferns collected from around the globe.Continue reading

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