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Favourites - 7

Contributions from readers are invited for this series on their favourite species, cultivar, hybrid or plant group. You don't need to write much - three or four paragraphs would be fine! So, if you'd like to give it a go, please get in touch with the editor (sgap@ozemail.com.au). If you have a good colour photograph to accompany it, that would be great but, if not, we may be able to dig up one from somewhere!

Payne's Thryptomene

Evan Weatherhead

One of my favourite plants.....

• One that flowers through our colder months
• One that is easy to propagate and maintain
• One that with flower and foliage makes a vase must
• One that lives a long time (twenty years +)
• One that is suitable for a small area garden - grows about one metre high by the same width
• One that revives after severe pruning (you know) chainsaw method - 4 inches or one hundred mm from ground level
• One that flowers in my garden in the lower Blue Mountains from April to December
• One that give me 50% success with small cuttings in glasshouse conditions taken September to October
• One that makes a good foreground plant
• One that grows in full sunshine and heavy shade in sandy soil and clayish
• One that is regularly tip pruned at lease once a week with a small pair scissors - well at least every fortnight

Select the thumbnail image or plant name for a higher resolution image [51k] Photographer: Unknown

The plant - Payne's thryptomene or Thryptomene "Paynei" - true name Thryptomene saxicola - a native of Western Australia.

The experts say it is not a hybrid but a selected form. The flowers are pink, light pink and a darker pink in my garden. The cuttings were from a plant that was backed over by a car and removed from the ground. but the plant had lived for more than twenty five years. It is an interesting plant to research. Botanists have had trouble naming it in by-gone years.

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Australian Plants online - December 2001
Association of Societies for Growing Australian Plants