Thursday 7 February 2008

A rocky plant

There is a plant in my garden that has refused to die from neglect and drought. It flowers all year round, and has more or less stayed the same size for about 15 years. It's a Cockspur Plectranthus parviflorus. As it's name, parviflorus, indicates, its flowers are not very big, but they are pretty. And it has a distinctive smell - unsurprising really, because it's in the Lamiaceae family in company with the mints, salvias, prostantheras and westringias.

In Geelong it grows naturally in a few rocky areas along creeks and rivers, in particular at Buckley Falls on the Barwon River in Highton. At this location it is a threatened species. On a distribution map this little plant grows up the east coast of Australia and the occurance in Geelong is a little dot on its western limit.

Plectranthus parviflorus

Plectranthus parviflorus

1 comment:

Duncan said...

A common plant up here in Gippsland Boobook, we also had it growing and seedlings sprang up everywhere. I occasionally see some plants with very dark blue flowers.