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RE: Pretty Flowers... YES/Banksia coccinea

A few comments that spring to mind...

Banksia coccinea grows as far north in Western Australian as the
Stirling Ranges
which all good Western Australians know that IF IT EVER SNOWS HERE its
on the top of these ranges!
The newspapers always send a poor camera crew up the top to take a photo
of a lump of ice for the front page, we are not talking ski'able stuff
here  :-)  

The Stirlings are quite spectacular for they look for all the world as
if someone just plonked a few big lumps of rock and dirt down in the
middle of a vast plain.  Everywhere else is just flat all around.  Well
worth a visit  if you are ever here and while the climb to the top is
pretty tough, a few hours worth, the views are great and you get to see
a lot of plants that grow no-where else in the world except on top of
these rocks.  Very special!

Eucalyptus rodantha is certainly a very special tree, it is a gazetted
rare species in W.A. I have only seen once in the wild growing on a
roadside in the wheatbelt.  Which despite sounding funny is where many
many gazetted rare species grow here as the wheatblet was so well
cleared that the roadsides offer some of the very few places for these
plants to survive.

Cheers, Rod

Rod Randall
Weed Risk Assessment
Weed Science Group, Agriculture Western Australia
Home Page  http://www.agric.wa.gov.au/progserv/plants/weeds/Weedsci.htm

             "I weed..."

> ----------
> From: 	David Poole
> Reply To: 	dave-poole@ilsham.demon.co.uk
> Sent: 	Friday, 9 January 1998 2:45 AM
> To: 	medit-plants@ucdavis.edu
> Subject: 	Re: Pretty Flowers... YES/Banksia coccinea
> 
> Whilst I no longer grow this species, I had a fair degree of success
> with it in and unheated, permanently 'open' greenhouse on my nursery
> up in the Midlands of England (51'N) during the late '70s.  It was
> grown in the ground, in an acid, red loam (Kuyper Marl), lightened
> with copious amounts of sharp sand in order to ensure very sharp
> drainage.  The plant was acquired as a 3 year old seedling and took 4
> years for the first spectacular flowers to appear.  Summer
> temperatures often rose to close to 30C. and the shrub was given
> prodigious amounts of water during hot periods.  All watering was
> curtailed during autumn and the plant was frequently 'bone-dry' during
> winter when temperatures frequently fell to below freezing, often
> remaining at mere 1 or 2C during the daytime.  At its best, my Banksia
> bore 38 flower heads open all at one time during 1980.
> 
> A friend who owned the most wonderful 'old-fashioned' type of nursery,
> high up in the Malvern Hills, a few miles further south, had a
> magnificent specimen growing in an open ended polythene tunnel.  It
> regularly produced over 50 large heads every year.  Here, it had to
> endure prolonged periods below freezing, although as with my plant, it
> was grown in sharply drained, shale-like, acidic soil and allowed to
> remain almost dust dry in winter.  This Banksia grew in company with a
> splendid, 2.5metre high Leucadendron argenteum, a Stenocarpus and
> several Proteas and Hakeas, all of which appeared to enjoy similar
> conditions.
> 
> Both Banksias succumbed to the exceptionally severe, 'Siberian' winter
> of 1981/1982, when prolonged freezing down to -20C was experienced
> over many weeks.
> 
> I tried a youngster down here, out of doors, on the south coast of
> England (50'N), but together with a nice plant of Eucalyptus
> rhodantha, died suddenly during a very hot, humid period in the summer
> of '95, despite having survived several winters.  The Eucalyptus had
> just flowered for the first time and I was not a happy person!
> 
> David Poole
>
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