WINTER BOUQUET

The flora of South Africa and Australia is quite distinctive with quite a few rich botanical families that provide a diverse and amazing bouquet of flowers. The Proteaceae (banksias, grevilleas, waratahs) and Myrtaceae (eucalypts, bottlebrushes, titrees, lillipillis) especially are well represented. Many of these flowers bloom in Winter to early Spring, so they can brighten up the grey days of the season.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme

SUMMER FLOWERS

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme

FREESIAS

We have a flower garden in our backyard and it is a pleasure to see the arrival and departure of the seasons, each bringing with it a bounty of floral gifts. It's always a pleasure to cut some flowers from one's garden and bring them into the house. Freesias are particularly rewarding as they need little care, bloom profusely and many varieties are scented beautifully. Many of the new large-flowered cultivars come in some astounding shades.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme

PROTEA

A bouquet of Protea neriifolia x susannae "Pink Ice" for today. Protea neriifolia is part of an ancient plant family, the Proteaceae, which had already divided into two subfamilies before the break-up of the Gondwanaland continent about 140 million years ago. Both the Proteoideae and the Grevilleoideae occur mainly in the southern hemisphere. This is the hardiest of all proteas, and well suited to low maintenance, low water use gardens. These spectacular blooms are useful in floral arrangements, fresh or dried.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

LILAC BOUQUET

Syringa vulgaris (lilac or common lilac) is a species of flowering plant in the olive family Oleaceae, native to the Balkan Peninsula, where it grows on rocky hills. This species is widely cultivated as an ornamental and has been naturalised in other parts of Europe (including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy), as well as much of North America. It is not regarded as an aggressive species, found in the wild in widely scattered sites, usually in the vicinity of past or present human habitations.

Most garden plants of S. vulgaris are cultivars, the majority of which do not exceed 4–5 m tall. Between 1876 and 1927, the nurseryman Victor Lemoine of Nancy introduced over 153 named cultivars, many of which are considered classics and still in commerce today. Lemoine's "French lilacs" extended the limited colour range to include deeper, more saturated hues, and they also introduced double-flowered "sports", with the stamens replaced by extra petals. Illustrated here is the hybrid 'Agincourt Beauty' that grows in our garden.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.