Grevillea beadleana

Warren and Gloria Sheather

Grevillea beadleana is the floral emblem of the Glen Innes Group of the Australian Plants Society. This beautiful grevillea is certainly worthy of selection as a floral emblem. G.beadleana is a native of the Northern Tablelands in New South Wales and develops into a dense, spreading shrub with a height and spread of about one and a half metres. The soft, lobed leaves have silvery hairs on the under surface. Eye-catching, dark red, toothbrush flowers appear in spring and summer with sporadic flowering at other times. Both flowers and foliage are features of this spectacular native plant. Well-drained, sunny sites are favoured. It usually propagates readily from cuttings although material from some individual plants is reluctant to strike.

G. beadleana honours the late Professor N.C.W. Beadle, the foundation Professor of Botany at the University of New England. The species has an interesting history. The type specimen was collected in 1982 from a population in Guy Fawkes River National Park on the Northern Tablelands. In recent times two more populations have been discovered. One large population was discovered in the Torrington area north of Glen Innes and another small population occurs in the Grafton area.

In 1887 a specimen was collected in the gorge country near Walcha. This specimen was lodged in the National Herbarium of Sydney. This early collection is similar to the type specimen except that the leaves have coarser leaf lobes. Frequent searches over the last few years have found no evidence of the species in this section of the gorge. Last year another population was reported, also from the gorge system but this time close to Armidale. This new population has coarse leaf lobes similar to the 1887 specimen. G.beadleana is now available from some nurseries.

From Native Plants for New South Wales, newsletter of the Australian Plants Society (NSW), April 2001).

Australian Plants online - 2007
Association of Societies for Growing Australian Plants