On my weekend walk through Lane Cove National Park, I came across the river rose. I have walked past this shrub so many times over the years, but only noticed it this weekend because of the lovely pink flowers.

The river rose prefers wet soils, especially when along creek banks-where I saw this particular plant, it was located at the bottom of a slope where it always appears to be damper than the surrounds, usually in forests. Shade is always preferred, where it flowers particularly well. Occurring along the coast of New South Wales, inland to the Blue Mountains . Sydney is its northernmost extent, and it appears in the southern states of Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania. The meaning of the river rose’s binomial name is as follows:

• Bauera-named after the brothers Franz and Ferdinand Bauera, who were both botanical artists that painted Australian native plants.
• Rubioides-Latin for ruby-like.

The river rose is a rather straggly shrub, reaching up to two metres tall and can sprawl to three to four metres wide. Leaflets are up to 15mm long by 3mm wide. Flowers are either pink or white that appear in spring and summer, although flowers can appear at almost any time of the year.

As a plant for the garden, the river rose can be useful because it is happy in moist shade. It is also quite pretty, even if it is a little unruly!