With another week out of the way, its time for flowers to bring a colourful ending to the week.
I will start with the always fabulous grevillea flowers, which are probably my favourite flowers. This is because they are different to most other flowers in existence and, due to the shear number of cultivars and species available, come in so many different colours that you can’t go wrong. I have two examples today, but I’m really not sure what cultivars they are (I think I’m going to have to add this to my ‘to be researched’ list, which is already stupidly long).
Another showing of an Australian native, this time a Callistemon with its red flowers.
Commonly known as the paddle plant, this Kalanchoe tetraphylla has really interesting leaves- I love the fact that there are so many different shades of green and red on the one plant.
Purple broom is a shrub with lovely purple, pea-shaped flowers. This is a native of South Africa and the way it is flowering, it is clearly vey happy in Sydney!
The flower spike of this agave is rather impressive, especially considering the fact that once the flowering comes to an end, the plant dies (the technical term in monocarpic). What a lot of people don’t appreciate is that these flowers are loved by bees, in a huge way! While native to the Americas and not Australia, the more we can encourage bees and other pollinators in the urban landscape, the better I think it is!
This cape daisy (Osteospurmum ecklonis) was really enjoying producing these pretty pink-purple flowers. A word of caution is probably need with these plants though-this plant comes from South Africa (which is home to many fabulous plants), which has a very similar climate to Australia and, rather unfortunately, many of these South African plants become garden escapes and rather rampant weeds here in Australia. The way this happens and ways to avoid, or at least reduce, this issue is worthy of a blog post in itself, which I’ll write in the next few days.
Some more nasturtiums this week, with lovely orange flowers in the bright sunshine (it’s been cold recently, but we have had plenty of lovely sunny days).
Surprisingly, I have included another palm tree (I must be going soft in my old age, I normally can’t stand palm trees!). This Chinese fan palm (Livistona chinensis) is also putting on a good show of flowers, only noticed when I looked out over it from a rooftop garden that I was working on yesterday.
These Mexican lily leaves are really pretty. I love leaves like these, where there are many different shades and/or colours to be seen on the same leaf. Just lovely.
I have had a rather enjoyable week with my plant and flower spotting- it brings a little joy to what are rather dull working days, which I am always thankful for!