The Smell of Spring

Glorious to walk about quietly today after a couple of frenetic days.

Whether you love showy bursts of colour or the subtlety of quieter, hidden flowers there is something in all these plants to relish. All photos taken in the grounds at Melbourne Uni.

Whites, Pinks, Mauves, Purples

Xanthorrhoea minor, Small grass bush

Xanthorrhoea australis, Australian Grass Tree

Osteospermum (‘Soprano White’?)

Flannel Flower – Actinotus helianthi

Brachyscome daisies

Brachyscome daisies – irridescent

Dr Suess Bush – ID welcome!

Aster (amellus?)

Aster (amellus?) en masse

Rhododendron

Greens, Yellows, Oranges, Reds

Hellebores

Liriodendron – Tulip tree bloom

Golden Everlasting; Xerochrysum bracteum

Unknown – Any ideas?

Correa (white tips?) Australian Christmas Bells

Banksia blechnifolia

Banksia caleyi

Kangaroo Paw – Anigozanthos flavidus

Kangaroo Paw – Anigozanthos flavidus

Rhododendron

Would love to know your favourite

My favourite flowers? – the Banksias – these were quite a surprise to see hidden at ground level.

If you’re researching plants or wanting to identify any in a garden or growing naturally – the Australian National Botanic Gardens website is a great resource for matching plants to names. However you have to have at least a vague idea of where to start. I will have to go and track down a couple of names of these plants from the gardeners.

http://www.anbg.gov.au/

Australian Flora is vast and exquisite in all its forms. With an ever growing number of modern cultivars and even new species being found – there remains a great field of horticultural and botanical discovery. A more general respect of indigenous plant knowledge is also being added to our understanding of our beautiful plant species.
This little snippet from the ABNG website gives a sense of the size of the known species currently indexed:

Dr Nancy Burbidge, Australian Botanist

The Australian Plant Name Index (APNI) was the inspiration of one of Australia’s most prominent botanists, Dr Nancy Burbidge. It was compiled over a period of 15 years from literature in herbaria and botanical libraries around the world, and published in 1991 as a 4-volume set of 3,055 pages, treating over 60,000 names. Originally compiled by Mr Arthur Chapman of the Australian Biological Resources Study (ABRS), the underlying database of APNI was transferred to the Australian National Botanic Gardens (ANBG) in 1991 as its foundation dataset, and as a public-good Internet resource.

Australian Plant Image Index – Australian Botanical Gardens

http://www.anbg.gov.au/cgi-bin/apiiName