Pink bells

Oils aint oils and sometimes bells aint bells.

I am very familiar with the small shrub called Pink-bells (Tetratheca ciliata) because it is common in the forests of southern Victoria. Sometimes familiarity means you end up hardly noticing them even though they are a beautiful colour.

Tetratheca ciliata Pink-bells

They're very demure little flowers despite their colour because they always hang their heads.

The majority are pink but I have found white ones occasionally and they are very beautiful as well.

Tetratheca ciliata Pink-bells (white form in bud)

Tetratheca ciliata Pink-bells (white form)

Pink-bells will start flowering very soon but this week I was in the Brisbane Ranges near Geelong I noticed and photographed a very dark pink plant that I thought was Pink-bells until I had a good look at it on the computer later.

Turns out it was Tetratheca bauerifolia Heath Pink-bells, a plant I'd never seen before and didn't even know existed. It's natural habitat is stony hills so the Brisbane Ranges National Park is the perfect spot for it. It has the same shy habit as T. ciliata but the leaves are in whorls around the stem and it is a shorter plant. The flowers are a much darker pink.

Tetratheca bauerifolia Heath Pink-bells

And now I've found out that there is another beautiful Pink-bells plant in the Brisbane Ranges, Tetratheca labillardierei Glandular Pink-bells, so there's no way I'm going to ignore pink-bells when exploring the ranges again.