Blog
Wildflower findings
Last Sunday as part of the Festival of Country Gardens we went to the Hester Forest, a few kms east of Bridgetown. The earlier flowering orchids such as donkey orchids and spider orchids had finished, but there were plenty of enamel and sun orchids. The forest had several distinctly different areas with different soil types and corresponding changes in vegetation.
An interesting plant that we came across was the Hooded Lily, Johnsonia lupulina, named because the flowers look rather like the flowers on the European Hop plant. Each of the flower heads is made up of many small lily-type flowers protected by the papery bracts which form an elongated shape with a rather fetching pink tip. We thought it would look very attractive in a garden setting, perhaps with many plants in a cluster or row. The occasional one would also look wonderful in a mixed bed of plants which is how it grows naturally in bushland anyway.